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It's Never Too Late to Engage in Lifestyle Activities: Significant Concurrent but not Change Relationships Between Lifestyle Activities and Cognitive Speed

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Canada.
² School of Aging Studies, University of South Florida, Tampa.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Canada.

Address correspondence to Allison Bielak, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3050 STN CSC, Victoria BC V8W 3P5, Canada. E-mail: abielak{at}uvic.ca

Little is known about potential longitudinal relationships between participation in social, physical, and intellectual activities and later cognitive performance. Data from the Victoria Longitudinal Study (n = 530) were used to test whether baseline and change in lifestyle engagement were related to corresponding indicators of cognitive speed (measured by mean-level and intraindividual variability). Regressions based on random effects model estimates showed that cross-sectional activity participation predicted corresponding values of both mean-level and intraindividual variability, but few longitudinal relationships were significant. Overall, a higher frequency of participation in cognitively complex activities was related to faster response times and lower intraindividual variability. Findings suggest that activity level at one point in time may be a more important predictor of cognition than an individual's changes in activity level.