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Updated: May 9, 2026

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing
Published on: January 24, 2020
[Cognitive reserve and linguistic skills in healthy elderly persons]
Ramón López-Higes1, Susana Rubio-Valdehita, José M Prados
1Departamento de Psicologia Basica II, Procesos Cognitivos, Facultad de Psicologia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, s/n. E-28223 Madrid. rlopezsa@psi.ucm.es
Introduction:
One research strategy that can be used with the cognitive reserve is to establish groups of elderly persons who differ in key variables that affect the cognitive reserve and then compare their performance in cognitive tests.
Aims:
To determine which of the variables that have an influence on the cognitive reserve (measured by means of the cognitive reserve questionnaire) are related with performance in the Boston Naming Test, and in the vocabulary and grammar comprehension tests from the ECCO_Senior battery.
Subjects And Methods:
The sample consisted of 83 elderly persons aged between 60 and 75 years.
Results And Conclusions:
Schooling, parents' schooling, job and reading habits are closely related to the performance of the elderly in naming, grammar comprehension and vocabulary. Schooling affects the comprehension of sentences with a higher propositional density, and reading habits seem to be closely related with the comprehension of sentences that are more complex in terms of their syntax. Schooling and job affect the performance obtained when dealing with verbs in the vocabulary test.
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