Cognitive reserve effects on discourse production processing in healthy aging

Aging is marked by physiological changes that significantly affect discourse production skills. Cognitive reserve (CR), the brain's ability to adapt and cope with age-related changes, was examined in relation to narrative discourse production in 105 healthy adults aged 61-84. Verbal working memory, sustained attention, and inhibitory control were also assessed. CR was selectively associated with multiple cognitive and discourse measures, particularly those related to executive functioning, lexical accuracy, coherence, and informativeness. Based on CR level, participants were divided in three groups balanced for age and gender: 35 high CR, 35 moderate CR, and 35 medium CR. Participants with high CR consistently outperformed those with moderate and medium CR who did not differ from each other, indicating a non-linear pattern of CR effects. The differential contributions of education, working activity, and leisure activities to cognitive and discourse performance are also examined. • Aging is associated with linguistic decay in language processing. • Cognitive reserve (CR) predicts linguistic abilities in healthy aging. • Persons with high CR narrate better than those with moderate and medium CR.