Within-person trial-to-trial variability precedes and predicts cognitive decline in old and very old age: Longitudinal data from the Berlin Aging Study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.05.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Neurocomputational modeling and empirical evidence suggest that losses in neuronal signaling fidelity cause senescent changes in behavior. We applied structural equation modeling to five-occasion 13-year longitudinal data from the Berlin Aging Study (n = 447; age range at t1 = 70–102 years) to test whether trial-to-trial reaction time variability in perceptual speed (identical pictures) antecedes and signals longitudinal decline in levels of performance on perceptual speed (digit letter and identical pictures) and ideational fluency (category fluency). Higher trial-to-trial variability preceded and predicted greater cognitive decline in perceptual speed and ideational fluency. We conclude that trial-to-trial variability signals impending decline in cognitive performance, and that theories of neurocognitive aging need to postulate developmental cascades between senescent changes in variability and central tendency.

Section snippets

Method

So far, the interdisciplinary multi-session longitudinal BASE study has collected longitudinal data over 13 years. The baseline assessment (t1) took place in 1990–1993. The second assessment (t2) was conducted 1.95 years (SD = 0.71), t3 3.76 years (SD = 0.66), t4 5.53 years (SD = 0.79), t5 8.94 years (SD = 0.84), and t6 13.00 years (SD = 0.87) after t1, respectively. Only a reduced assessment protocol was completed at t2, therefore this assessment is not considered here. Detailed descriptions of the

Results

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics. All variables, with the exception of suspected dementia, were standardized (linearly transformed) to a T-score metric (M = 50; SD = 10), with the t1-assessment providing the reference distribution. Time-to-death and chronological age were additionally centered to a mean of zero. All variables displayed acceptable distributions (i.e., skewness and kurtosis).

Discussion

In line with MacDonald et al. (2003), we observed a strong association (rs = −0.82 and −0.68) between longitudinal changes in intraindividual reaction time variability on a measure of perceptual speed and longitudinal changes in levels of performance in ideational fluency and perceptual speed. In addition, and more importantly, our results reveal that greater trial-to-trial variability in perceptual speed performance predicts looming changes in cognitive performance levels. In contrast, lower

Acknowledgements

This study was carried out in the context of the Berlin Aging Study (BASE). The authors express their gratitude to all colleagues in BASE. Special thanks go to Florian Schmiedek for several productive discussions.

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