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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Ann Neurol. 2011 May 11;70(2):296–304. doi: 10.1002/ana.22391

Table 2.

Cognitive decline as a function of occupational position, estimates derived from linear mixed models using 3 assessments over 10 years.

OCCUPATION POSITION

High
(N=3140)
14% women
Intermediate
(N=3289)
31% women
Low
(N=1025)
73% women

Cognitive tests† 10-year decline
(95% CI)
10-year decline
(95% CI)
10-year decline
(95% CI)
≠P for
interaction
Reasoning (AH4-I) −3.47 (−3.69, −3.26) −3.43 (−3.64, −3.21) −4.04 (−4.47, −3.60)* 0.04
Memory (20-word list) −0.77 (−0.87, −0.68) −0.61 (−0.70, −0.51)* −0.46 (−0.64, −0.28)** 0.003
Phonemic fluency (“s” words) −1.72 (−1.85, −1.59) −1.48 (−1.61, −1.35)* −1.54 (−1.79, −1.29) 0.04
Semantic fluency (animal names) −1.53 (−1.65, −1.41) −1.26 (−1.38, −1.14)** −0.89 (−1.12, −0.65)*** <0.001
Vocabulary (Mill-Hill) 0.11 (0.03, 0.19) 0.08 (0.00, 0.16) 0.06 (−0.10, 0.22) 0.83
Global cognitive score± −0.27 (−0.28, −0.26) −0.23 (−0.25, −0.22)*** −0.21 (−0.24, −0.19)*** 0.001
†

Range of cognitive tests: Memory (0–20), Reasoning (0–65), Phonemic and Semantic Fluency (0.35) and Vocabulary (0–33).

≠

The interaction term assesses whether the decline was different in the three occupational groups. Further tests compared the high reserve group to the other two groups and here

*

p<0.05,

**

p<0.01,

***

p<0.001.

±

Score calculated by converting raw scores on each test to z-scores using the baseline mean and standard deviation and then averaged across the five tests.