Cognition

Publication Title: 
Child Development

Six match-to-sample picture/object selection experiments were designed to explore children's knowledge about superordinate words (e.g., "food") and how they acquire this knowledge. Three factors were found to influence the learning and extension of superordinate words in 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 230): The number of standards (one versus two), the type of standards presented (from different basic-level categories versus from the same basic-level category), and the nature of the object representations used (pictures versus objects).

Author(s): 
Liu, J.
Golinkoff, R. M.
Sak, K.
Publication Title: 
Medical Hypotheses

Cognitive plasticity, a developmental trait that promotes acquisition of complex skills such as language or playing musical instruments, diminishes substantially during puberty. The loss of plasticity has been attributed to surge of sex steroids during adolescence, but the phenomenon remains poorly understood. We hypothesize that pineal involution during puberty may contribute to plasticity decay. The pineal gland produces melatonin, the level of which declines dramatically during onset of puberty.

Author(s): 
Yun, A. Joon
Bazar, Kimberly A.
Lee, Patrick Y.
Publication Title: 
Developmental Science

Implicit skill learning underlies obtaining not only motor, but also cognitive and social skills through the life of an individual. Yet, the ontogenetic changes in humans' implicit learning abilities have not yet been characterized, and, thus, their role in acquiring new knowledge efficiently during development is unknown. We investigated such learning across the lifespan, between 4 and 85 years of age with an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task, and we found that the difference in implicitly learning high- vs.

Author(s): 
Janacsek, Karolina
Fiser, JÛzsef
Nemeth, Dezso
Publication Title: 
The British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science

BACKGROUND: The mental status examination of an extreme case of longevity, J. C., aged 118 years and 9 months, is documented in order to further knowledge regarding profiles of morbidity in the extremely elderly. J. C. is presently considered to have the longest authenticated life-span in the history of the human species. METHOD: Neuropsychological tests were improvised taking into account the subject's severe perceptual deficits. The examination was carried out over a six-month period. A CT scan was also conducted.

Author(s): 
Ritchie, K.
Publication Title: 
The Journals of Gerontology. Series A, Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences

BACKGROUND: Families of centenarians have high levels of plasma high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, which may have neurological as well as cardiovascular protective effects during aging. Because plasma HDL level declines progressively with aging, we examined whether centenarians with higher plasma HDL levels have better cognitive function.

Author(s): 
Atzmon, Gil
Gabriely, Ilan
Greiner, William
Davidson, Deborah
Schechter, Clyde
Barzilai, Nir
Publication Title: 
Neurology

OBJECTIVE: To test whether cholesterol ester transfer protein (CETP) genotype (VV homozygosity for I405V) is associated with preservation of cognitive function in addition to its association with exceptional longevity. METHODS: We studied Ashkenazi Jews with exceptional longevity (n = 158; age 99.2 +/- 0.3 years) for the associations of CETP VV genotype and lipoprotein phenotype, using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). To confirm the role of CETP in a younger cohort, we studied subjects from the Einstein Aging Study (EAS) for associations between CETP VV and cognitive impairment.

Author(s): 
Barzilai, N.
Atzmon, G.
Derby, C. A.
Bauman, J. M.
Lipton, R. B.
Publication Title: 
The Journals of Gerontology. Series A, Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences

Tissue damage due to oxidative stress has been implicated in aging, memory loss, and cataract formation. We hypothesized that persons who achieved exceptional longevity with preserved cognition (successful aging [SAG]) would exhibit a lower rate of age-related cataract (ARC) than the general population. The age-specific rates of ARC for a group of 100 (50 male, 50 female) elderly persons who reached at least age 90 years with preserved cognition were compared to the corresponding rates of ARC reported in five population-based studies.

Author(s): 
Zubenko, George S.
Zubenko, Wendy N.
Maher, Brion S.
Wolf, Norman S.
Publication Title: 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Late-life loss of independence in daily living is a central concern for the aging individual and for society. The implications of increased survival to advanced age may be different at the population level than at the individual level. Here we used a longitudinal multi-assessment survey of the entire Danish 1905 cohort from 1998 to 2005 to assess the loss of physical and cognitive independence in the age range of 92 to 100 years.

Author(s): 
Christensen, Kaare
McGue, Matt
Petersen, Inge
Jeune, Bernard
Vaupel, James W.
Publication Title: 
The Journals of Gerontology. Series A, Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences

BACKGROUND: Most survival studies of the elderly population have set their baselines for first examinations between 60 and 80 years. The rapidly increasing numbers of exceptionally old persons call for knowledge about determinants of exceptional survival. METHODS: The Swedish Centenarian Study followed 100 centenarians from the age of 100 to death of the entire cohort, by age 111 years. A biomedical, psychological, and social multivariate survival analysis was performed based on factors identified as important in earlier studies of older adults.

Author(s): 
Hagberg, Bo
Samuelsson, Gillis
Publication Title: 
Archives of Internal Medicine

BACKGROUND: Physical activity is associated with reduced risks of chronic diseases and premature death. Whether physical activity is also associated with improved overall health among those who survive to older ages is unclear. METHODS: A total of 13,535 Nurses' Health Study participants who were free of major chronic diseases at baseline in 1986 and had survived to age 70 years or older as of the 1995-2001 period made up the study population.

Author(s): 
Sun, Qi
Townsend, Mary K.
Okereke, Olivia I.
Franco, Oscar H.
Hu, Frank B.
Grodstein, Francine

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