Neuroticism in Adolescence and Cognitive Function in Midlife in the British 1946 Birth Cohort: The HALCyon Program

Catharine R. Gale, Ian J. Deary, Diana Kuh, Felicia Huppert and Marcus Richards

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2009, vol. 65B, issue 1, 50-56

Abstract: We examined whether higher levels of neuroticism in adolescence were associated with poorer cognitive function in midlife in 2,071 members of the British 1946 birth cohort. Higher neuroticism at age 13 was associated with poorer performance on tests of verbal ability, verbal fluency, and verbal memory at age 53 in sex-adjusted analyses. However, higher neuroticism was also associated with poorer cognitive performance at age 8. After adjustment for childhood cognition or educational attainment, the associations between neuroticism at age 13 and midlife cognition ceased to be statistically significant. The link between neuroticism and subsequent cognitive ability may be a reflection of a long-standing correlation between the stable aspects of these traits since childhood, but further measurements of both traits are needed to confirm this. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbp082 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:65b:y:2009:i:1:p:50-56

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().