%0 Journal Article
%T Neighborhood Influences on Late Life Cognition in the ACTIVE Study
%A Shannon M. Sisco
%A Michael Marsiske
%J Journal of Aging Research
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/435826
%X Low neighborhood-level socioeconomic status has been associated with poorer health, reduced physical activity, increased psychological stress, and less neighborhood-based social support. These outcomes are correlates of late life cognition, but few studies have specifically investigated the neighborhood as a unique source of explanatory variance in cognitive aging. This study supplemented baseline cognitive data from the ACTIVE (Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly) study with neighborhood-level data to investigate (1) whether neighborhood socioeconomic position (SEP) predicts cognitive level, and if so, whether it differentially predicts performance in general and specific domains of cognition and (2) whether neighborhood SEP predicts differences in response to short-term cognitive intervention for memory, reasoning, or processing speed. Neighborhood SEP positively predicted vocabulary, but did not predict other general or specific measures of cognitive level, and did not predict individual differences in response to cognitive intervention. 1. Introduction The neighborhood has emerged as a prominent level of analysis in studies of contextual influences on health and wellbeing in human development. This owes to the social organization of life within neighborhoods, and to the availability of data at neighborhood-like levels of analysis (i.e., census tracts). Neighborhood context has also received greater attention due to ecological psychology¡¯s conceptualization of human development as the product of a dynamic interaction between the individual and multiple nested environments, of which the neighborhood is one of the most immediate environments [1]. Contemporary scholarship on neighborhood factors has also highlighted the importance of understanding whether neighborhood variables add explanatory variance above and beyond individual differences. Neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) is the most consistently reported neighborhood-level predictor of cognitive outcomes¡ªcertainly in childhood, and potentially across the life span [2]. SES is also the strongest and most consistently reported neighborhood-level predictor of health outcomes among older adults¡ªa relationship which may have a cumulative effect across the life span [3]. The association of neighborhood-level SES with health is in fact stronger among adults aged 60¨C69 than among young and middle-aged adults, and during these years its association with health is comparable to or stronger than the relationship of individual SES to health [4]. In addition to predicting poorer
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jar/2012/435826/