Cognitive ability in early adulthood plays key role

A US-led international team of scientists has found that cognitive ability in early adulthood plays a key role in one's mental capacity later in life.

The team recently published its study.

The scientists, led by researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, were trying to figure out the relationship between early adult general cognitive ability, or GCA, and the cognitive capabilities of people, such as education and intellectual activities, when they are older.

They focused the study on the effects of GCA, or a diverse set of skills involved in thinking, such as reasoning, memory and perception, in people's early adulthood as they examined more than 1,000 veterans of the Vietnam War era, who are now in their mid-50s and mid-60s.

The scientists, whose research results were published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the cognitive capabilities of the veterans, 80 percent of whom had no combat experience, are more associated with their cognitive performance as is demonstrated in a qualification test at age 20.

The GCA at age 20 accounts for only about 10 percent of the variance in assessments of each of the seven cognitive domains, including memory, abstract reasoning and verbal fluency, according to the study.

"The findings suggest that the impact of education, occupational complexity and engagement in cognitive activities on later-life cognitive function ... are largely downstream effects of young adult intellectual capacity," says the study's first author, William Kremen, a professor of psychiatry at the UCSD's School of Medicine.

The scientists believe the role of education in increasing GCA takes place primarily during childhood and adolescence when the brain's development continues to progress substantially.

They suggested that having better-quality childhood and adolescent education could help prevent cognitive capabilities from declining when people grow older.