Researchers find that certain cognitive abilities are associated with longer lifespans in older persons.

A new study published in Psychological Science notes that not all aspects of intelligence are equally related to how long people live. It has long been known that more intelligent people live longer, but researchers who used data from research based on the Berlin era discovered a specific ability: verbal liquids. Those who could quickly name animals or words, starting with a particular letter, tended to be longer than those who had to deal with them. High values ​​for these tasks predict a nearly nine-year difference in median survival.

This study was developed to answer long-term questions in aging. Do different types of cognitive skills differ throughout a person's lifespan? Previous studies have shown that general intelligence is related to survival, but in many cases, they relied on a single snapshot of cognitive performance rather than pursuing change over time. The researchers also discussed whether it is a person's average level of ability or their cognitive decline rate. This makes it a better predictive lifespan.

To better understand these relationships, the authors analyzed long-term data from very old people in the new study, comparing different mental skills side by side, and simultaneously examined how they changed over time.

"The relationship between cognitive performance and mortality has long been known in the scientific literature. Recently, Paolo Guista, research author of Paolo Guista, a full professor of psychology at Geneva University, said:

"This latter question requires updates in longitudinal data and follow-ups of death status, both rarely available half a century ago, but in recent years, it has become easier.

"In addition, they received reliable mortality rates for all participants. Finally, sophisticated statistical models analyze how people change cognitive performance and how both levels of performance and changes in mortality are related.

Participants performed nine different mental tasks assessing four broad skills: speed of perception, episodic memory, linguistic fluency, and verbal knowledge. Additionally, the researchers calculated general intelligence scores based on performance for all tasks. The team used sophisticated methods.

This is called a general multivariate longitudinal survival model, allowing us to examine how each person's cognitive skills changed and how these changes were related to a person's survival. This method is particularly powerful as it takes into account that people who lose weight die faster.

The most striking result was the ability to hear the words, only the fluids of words, especially the animals, and the ability to hear the words, starting with the letter "S", and how long the participants lived. Those who improved their performance with these tasks tended to live longer, regardless of how they worked in other tasks, such as memory or vocabulary.

The effect was quite good. On average, participants who could call many animals and words lived nine years longer than those who had to deal with these tasks. It was simply placed with a longer lifespan associated with more animals in 90 seconds.

"Intelligence predicts survival at the population level, as people who can achieve greater performance can survive longer," Ghisleta told Psypost. "In addition, we all naturally sink into our perceptions at different rates. This rate of decline also predicts survival rates, as we lose weight and less survive faster.

"It's attractive, but it's difficult to advise an individual from the population level, because we don't know how such individuals will be affected by the population that is the basis of their discovery. We made it important." If all nine tasks and general intelligence values ​​from the same model were considered, only the following tasks added clear predictors.

This indicates that language skills are not merely a proxy for becoming intelligent in general. It can reflect what is reflected in brain health and cognitive aging. "I was expecting another cognitive task as strong as oral fluorescence, i.e., perceptual speed." "Perceptual speed,"

"Tasks like this require a comparison of simple stimuli such as illustrations, letters, numbers, etc., to adapt them according to the template. Most people usually manage these tasks, but do this at a different speed. These tasks are set in time, so many correct match performances will ultimately be successful within a very short period (60-90 seconds). "

" Many studies conclude that such tasks are the most sensitive to differences among people with cognitive decline. Therefore, I predicted that this greater sensitivity would also be associated with reduced survival rates compared to other cognitive tasks. However, in this respect, the perceptual speed task was a liquid oral task. "

There are several reasons why oral language skills can be a very powerful predictor of survival. In contrast to many intelligence tests that measure a single ability, speech fluids are based simultaneously on several brain functions. This includes the ability to quickly switch memory, vocabulary, attention, and mental categories.

This makes you particularly sensitive to changes in brain health. Previous studies have shown that language skills are often one of the first skills to be weight under conditions such as dementia and Parkinson's disease. This task is also strongly based on the prefrontal cortex, a brain area that is particularly susceptible to aging and disease.

Another reason why Language Fluids surpass other cognitive measures is that they combine both liquid and crystallized skills. Fluid intelligence is associated with the ability to think quickly and solve new problems, while crystallized intelligence reflects accumulated knowledge. The oral fluid ability appears to satisfy both. This dual nature is particularly beneficial when assessing general brain health in older people.

This study also highlights the advantages of using a general statistical model compared to the traditional two-stage approach. In older studies, cognitive decline and survival are often analyzed in separate steps, which can cause distortion.

The general approach used here allowed researchers to model how people's skills changed over time, and how these changes provided a more accurate picture concerning the risk of death.

There were some limitations to this study. The sample was intentionally stratified according to age and gender and was highly elderly-focused, and therefore not entirely representative of the general German population. All participants came from Berlin, most were born between 1887 and 1922. It remains unclear whether similar results are found in younger people or a wide variety of population groups.

"All studies should allow restrictions simply because it is impossible to test any form of clubs, and that this cannot be expected to remain in different cultures and different social contexts that have been stable over time," Gisetta said. "Our sample was meticulously designed at the start of the study (1989), but has certain characteristics that certainly limit the ability to generalize groups over the age of 70."

"It is even more important for this study to have robust evidence of mechanisms that may refer to reduced knowledge and shortened survival rates. Several scientific hypotheses have been formulated, some are related to biological indicators of aging, while others are related to brain structure and function of neuroscientific evidence that is not available in this study."

However, the results show that verbal fluency could be a window into a person's total biological and cognitive resilience. Future studies could look into the potential effects on longevity or health of interventions aimed at maintaining or enhancing verbal fluency in older persons. In order to verify if verbal fluency consistently performs better than other measures of cognitive ability in predicting life expectancy, the researchers also hope that their techniques can be applied to additional datasets.