2022 International Conference on Aging in the Americas

Abstract

There are considerable individual differences in the rates of cognitive decline and the presence of cognitive resilience in later adulthood. Cognitive resilience is defined as the discordance between a person’s actual and expected cognition given their neuropathology and can be estimated by extracting residuals from a model regressing cognition on neuropathology. Big Five personality traits are among the factors that may account for some of these individual difference in cognitive decline, and may also predict cognitive resilience. The current presentation will share results from two papers that investigated first, whether personality traits were associated with trajectories of cognitive decline, and whether these associations varied before and after dementia diagnosis. Second, we explored whether personality traits were associated with resilience to neuropathologic burden. Across study aims was a focus on replicability and generalizability, and analyses were pre-registered and conducted in up to four independent longitudinal studies. As expected, we detected evidence for cognitive decline in all samples. Results indicated that neuroticism and openness were associated with total cognitive function. and openness was associated with decline post dementia diagnosis. Higher neuroticism was associated with greater vulnerability to pathology, and higher conscientiousness was associated with less cognitive decline relative to the amount of pathology, or greater resilience. These results suggest that personality could be included in resilience-based prevention models and interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive function across older adulthood.