Table 4.

Cognitive and behavioral measures from the Cam-CAN database proposed to rely on either NA-dependent or NA-independent processes (see ref. ³² for a full description of the measures) and included in the SEM analyses.

Measure	Description	Outcome variable(s) used in the analysis
Emotional memory*	Study: view (positive, neutral, or negative) background image, then object image superimposed, and imagine a “story” linking the two; test (incidental): view and identify degraded image of (studied, new) object, then judge memory and confidence for visually intact image of same object, then recall valence and any details of background image from study phase.	For negative valence: priming (accuracy for studied vs. new degraded objects, EMp); familiarity (accuracy for item memory, EMn); recollection (accuracy for background memory, EMv)
Emotional regulation*	View (positive, neutral, negative) film clips under instructions to simply “watch” or “reappraise” (attempt to reduce emotional impact by reinterpreting its meaning; for some negative films only), then rate emotional impact (how negative, positive they felt during clip) and the degree to which they successfully reappraised.	Negative regulation (ERr) score: “reappraise” negative vs. “watch” negative ratings and negative reactivity (ERn) score: “watch” negative vs. “watch” neutral negative ratings.
Stop-Signal, Go/No-Go*	On Go trials, view a black arrow pointing left or right and indicate the direction of the arrow by pressing left/right buttons. In No-Go trials, participants are required to make no response to a stop signal, which is a red left/right arrow and concurrent tone.	Time needed to inhibit responses on the Stop-Signal trials, also known as Stop-Signal Response time (SSRT). Higher values indicate poorer performance.
Hotel Task*	Perform tasks in role of hotel manager: write customer bills, sort money, proofread advert, sort playing cards, alphabetize list of names. Total time must be allocated equally between tasks; there is not enough time to complete any one task.	Time taken to complete task. Higher values indicate poorer performance.
Sleep quality*	Complete Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) which assesses sleep disturbances.	PSQI total score which measures overall sleep disturbance. Higher values indicate worse sleep outcomes.
Years of education*	Proposed indicator of cognitive reserve.	Number of years in formal education.
Occupational complexity*	Proposed indicator of cognitive reserve.	Score of 1–10 where 10 is least complex. Higher values indicate poorer occupational performance.
Verbal intelligence*	Proposed indicator of cognitive reserve. View pairs of items comprising one real word and one invented non-word, and identify the real word.	Spot the Word test score—number of correct answers.
Fluid intelligence	Complete nonverbal puzzles involving series completion, classification, matrices, and conditions.	Cattell test score
Sentence comprehension	Listen to and judge grammatical acceptability of partial sentences, beginning with an (ambiguous, unambiguous) sentence stem (e.g., Tom noticed that landing planes…) followed by a disambiguating continuation word (e.g., are) in a different voice. Ambiguity is either semantic or syntactic, with empirically determined dominant and subordinate interpretations.	Reaction time, proportion of’unacceptable responses in each condition. Higher values indicate poorer performance.
Face recognition for familiar faces	View faces of famous people (and some unknown foils), judge whether each is familiar, and if so, what is known about the person (occupation, nationality, origin of fame, etc.), then attempt to provide person’s name.	Accuracy (identifying information or full name given) as a proportion of number of faces recognized as familiar, subtracting false alarms (unknown faces given “familiar” response)

Measures proposed to be NA-dependent are indicated by (*). Measures for which higher values indicate poorer outcomes/performance were predicted to have a negative or inverse correlation with LC CR.