Education and Cognitive Functioning Across the Life Span

作者：Martin Lövdén, Laura Fratiglioni, M. Maria Glymour, Ulman Lindenberger, Elliot M. Tucker–Drob · 发表于：Psychological Science in the Public Interest · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1177/1529100620920576 · 被引用次数：1240 · 研究领域：Cognitive Abilities and Testing、Early Childhood Education and Development、Aging and Gerontology Research

Cognitive abilities are important predictors of educational and occupational performance, socioeconomic attainment, health, and longevity. Declines in cognitive abilities are linked to impairments in older adults' everyday functions, but people differ from one another in their rates of cognitive decline over the course of adulthood and old age. Hence, identifying factors that protect against compromised late-life cognition is of great societal interest. The number of years of formal education completed by individuals is positively correlated with their cognitive function throughout adulthood and predicts lower risk of dementia late in life. These observations have led to the propositions that prolonging education might (a) affect cognitive ability and (b) attenuate aging-associated declines in cognition. We evaluate these propositions by reviewing the literature on educational attainment and cognitive aging, including recent analyses of data harmonized across multiple longitudinal cohort studies and related meta-analyses. In line with the first proposition, the evidence indicates that educational attainment has positive effects on cognitive function. We also find evidence that cognitive abilities are associated with selection into longer durations of education and that there are common factors (e.g., parental socioeconomic resources) that affect both educational attainment and cognitive development. There is likely reciprocal interplay among these factors, and among cognitive...