A cross-cultural view on cognitive aging: Comparisons between Bangladesh and Sweden

• Most studies on cognitive aging have been conducted in economically developed countries (mainly on Western populations). It is of importance to test the generalizability of obtained results with studies in cultural settings with different living conditions. However, the share of research conducted in cross-cultural cognitive aging is rather small, especially on memory. The main aim of this study was to compare relative importance of some commonly used predictors (age, sex, years of education, systolic blood pressure, vascular diseases, sensory-motor functioning, and processing speed) for episodic and semantic memory performance in older people (≥ 60 years) from Bangladesh (n = 400) and Sweden (n = 1098), respectively. A main finding was that age variations did not have as much impact on episodic and semantic memory performance in Bangladesh as in Sweden, and sex was of greater importance for semantic memory performance in Bangladesh. In the western world, chronological age is believed to be strongly associated with memory performance in cross-sectional studies, especially in people above 60 years of age. This study indicates that the difference between the two countries in relative importance of the predictors included in this study is mainly due to that years of education is connected to age in the western world but to sex in Bangladesh. It remains to be examined whether earlier selective survival is also responsible for the relative absence of cognitive age differences in Bangladesh.  

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

cognitive aging

cross-cultural

episodic memory

semantic memory

selective survival

Psychology

Psykologi

Psychology

psykologi

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)