Does education influence the age-related cognitive decline? A further inquiry

To determine whether the age-related decline of cognitive abilities is related to educational level, 307 normal participants aged 40 to 85 entered a cross-sectional neuropsychological study. The test battery consisted of five tests chosen for their ability to show a linear decline with age. Of the three patterns of interaction between education and age-related decline (i.e., protection, parallelism, and confluence), some tests showed a parallelism (Verbal Fluency, Spatial Memory, and Raven's Progressive Matrices), and others showed protection (Visual Attention and Verbal Memory). Confluence was never observed. We discuss these results with special reference to the methodological problems related to this type of inquiry.