ABSTRACT

Cognitive reserve (CR) refers to acquired experience that modulates resistance to physiological aging or brain damage. A relatively neglected issue is whether or not CR affects cognitive abilities equally. One relevant component of CR seems to be the richness of connections in semantic knowledge.

We examined, in N = 66 healthy older adults, the potential influence of CR and semantic knowledge on the ability to retrieve proper names and common nouns. These two name categories have different semantic organisations, whereby proper names are characterised by a weaker semantic link to the information they refer to.

Controlling for age, CR and semantic knowledge were linearly and positively associated with common noun retrieval. On the other hand, CR assisted proper name retrieval in older adults with a weaker semantic profile, while semantic knowledge assisted proper name retrieval in older adults with lower CR.

This study contributes to define the cognitive underpinnings of CR.

摘要

认知储备 (CR) 是指调节对生理老化或脑损伤的抵抗力的后天经验。一个相对被忽视的问题是 CR 是否同样影响认知能力。CR 的一个相关组成部分似乎是语义知识中联系的丰富性。

我们在 N = 66 名健康老年人中检查了 CR 和语义知识对检索专有名词和普通名词的能力的潜在影响。这两个名称类别具有不同的语义组织，因此专有名称的特点是与其所指信息的语义链接较弱。

控制年龄、CR 和语义知识与常用名词检索呈线性正相关。另一方面，CR 有助于语义特征较弱的老年人的专有名词检索，而语义知识有助于 CR 较低的老年人的专有名词检索。

本研究有助于定义 CR 的认知基础。