YEARS OF EDUCATION INFLUENCE PERFORMANCE IN A TEST OF ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY, BUT NOT A TEST OF NON-ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY

Within the age-related decline in episodic memory, associative memory is prominently affected. This is supported by an associative deficit hypothesis, which states that a major factor leading to deterioration in episodic memory in older adults is a deficit in creating and retrieving links between single units of information. On the other hand, formal educational attainment, an important proxy of cognitive reserve, impacts neuropsychological performance to different extents depending on the cognitive domain, with individuals with higher cognitive reserve maintaining higher levels of cognitive performance despite age-related changes in the brain. We aimed to evaluate the association of age and years of education in associative and non-associative memory tests. We assessed 39 healthy Mexican older adults (Age: 68.9 ±5.4; years of education: 11.6; ±4.7; MMSE: 27.4 ±1.8). The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) was used to evaluate non-associative episodic memory, while a novel memory test focused on face-name associations, and able to discriminate immediate recall, face and name recognition, spontaneous and cued delayed recall, and binding was used to appraise associative memory. In linear regression models, the summed results of the associative memory test, but not the RAVLT measures, were associated to both age and years of education. In a stepwise model including both education and age, this association was only explained by education (β= 1.7, p< 0.001), meaning that for every two years of education, a three points higher total score of the associative test would be expected. The association between years of education and associative memory testing could be explained by adults with higher education having access to better strategic processes, which provides them with resiliency in regards to age-related associative memory deficits. The absence of such associations in the RAVLT may indicate that, in healthy older adults, non-associative memory is less affected by the effects of education and age. This results should be replicated on larger samples to ascertain the validity of these results.