IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v56y2003i4p785-792.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does active leisure protect cognition? Evidence from a national birth cohort

Author

Listed:
  • Richards, Marcus
  • Hardy, Rebecca
  • Wadsworth, Michael E. J.

Abstract

Social, physical and intellectual activities are thought to facilitate cognitive performance and slow the rate of age associated cognitive decline, but little is known about this association in younger adulthood. We used multiple regression to test the association between two kinds of activity at 36 years--physical exercise and spare-time activity--and verbal memory at 43 and 53 years in 1919 males and females enrolled in the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (the British 1946 birth cohort). Both kinds of activities were significantly and positively associated with memory performance at 43 years, after controlling for sex, education, occupational social class, IQ at 15 years, and recurrent ill health and significant mental distress. Furthermore, physical exercise at 36 years (but not spare-time activity) was associated with a significantly slower rate of decline in memory from 43 to 53 years, after controlling for the same factors, with evidence that continuing physical exercise after 36 years was important for protection. We conclude that physical exercise and spare-time activity are significantly associated with benefit to memory in midlife, although these two kinds of voluntary activity may exert their effects on cognition via different paths.

Suggested Citation

  • Richards, Marcus & Hardy, Rebecca & Wadsworth, Michael E. J., 2003. "Does active leisure protect cognition? Evidence from a national birth cohort," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 785-792, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:56:y:2003:i:4:p:785-792
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(02)00075-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lenzen, Sabrina & Gannon, Brenda & Rose, Christiern, 2020. "A dynamic microeconomic analysis of the impact of physical activity on cognition among older people," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    2. Richard Desjardins & Arne Jonas Warnke, 2012. "Ageing and Skills: A Review and Analysis of Skill Gain and Skill Loss Over the Lifespan and Over Time," OECD Education Working Papers 72, OECD Publishing.
    3. Antonella Lopez & Alessandro Germani & Luigi Tinella & Alessandro Oronzo Caffò & Albert Postma & Andrea Bosco, 2021. "The Road More Travelled: The Differential Effects of Spatial Experience in Young and Elderly Participants," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(2), pages 1-20, January.
    4. Alan J. Gow & Alison Pattie & Ian J. Deary, 2017. "Lifecourse Activity Participation From Early, Mid, and Later Adulthood as Determinants of Cognitive Aging: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1921," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 72(1), pages 25-37.
    5. Kesavayuth, Dusanee & Liang, Yufang & Zikos, Vasileios, 2018. "An active lifestyle and cognitive function: Evidence from China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 183-191.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:56:y:2003:i:4:p:785-792. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.