The Study Of Illiterate Older Individuals’Cognitive Function And It’s Influencing Factors

Nowadays, China is increasingly aging. With the increase of age, many mental and physical functions of individuals become aged. Specifically, the aging of cognitive function surely impact and even do harm to older adults’life. Therefore, it is significantly important to research for older adults to maintain a sound cognitive function and thus to age healthily. Education has always been an essential factor that impacts older adults’cognitive functions. Lack of educational protection influences and even threats the successful aging process through employment, lifestyle, health and economic conditions. Therefore, research on illiterate older adults not only provide us with basic conditions of aging and its impact factors for this group, but also provide another way for understanding the significance of education on aging process. Further, most studies that explore relationship between education and cognition tend to make the conclusion that education is a protective factor of aging based on correlations between different levels of education and cognitive aging. However, they neglect that lifestyles, especially those involved cognitive activities, are significantly different among distinct levels of educated older adults. Research has found that participation frequency in reading books, newspapers and magazines is significantly higher for those highly educated. Therefore, the present study questioned that what factors lead to correlation between education and cognitive aging, the education level, the lifestyle(especially leisure activity), or mediator effects of leisure activity between education and cognitive age.In the present study, with the illiterate as our participants, we explored the cognitive function and its impact factors of illiterate older adults in China based on an empirical research. Also, we try to examine the mediator effects of leisure activity between education and cognitive function to further found effect ways of education on cognitive functions. We believe that our research will surely widen the theories and mechanisms of illiterate older adults’ cognitive function and will guide the further cognition intervention in illiterate older adults.Through psychological questionnaires and scales,386illiterate participants were randomly selected in Chongqing city and Chengdu city. Further, balancing the gender and residence, the same number of educated was also chosen from these two areas. Interviewers were trained and professional. Test materials were standardized and bound in order. Difference Tests of demographical variables on illiterate older adults’ cognitive function, regression analysis on cognitive function of illiterate older adults, comparison analysis between illiterate and educated older adults and mediator effect of leisure activity on age and cognitive function were utilized. The results are as follows:(1) Global cognitive function, short-term memory and perceptual speed are significantly different between older adults in the city and the suburban; Male and female do not different in any cognitive functioin.(2) Factors that influence the illiterate in city and suburban are distinct. Age and leisure activity impact the illiterate in both the two areas. Health conditions and employment are the factors that significantly influence citizens, while illness and residence significantly impact the suburban.(3) There are different factors that influence the high and lower cognitive function group in illiterate older adults. Age and leisure activity impact them both. Illness, employment and health conditions only impact those with high cognitive function, while drinking, residence and emotional states these days only impact those with lower cognitive function.(4)Different factors influence cognitive function of the illiterate and the educated differently. Age, leisure activity, employment and smoking influence them all. Residence and illness only impact the cognitive function of the illiterate, while education, life satisfaction, drinking and emotional states these days only impact the educated.(5) Leisure activity impacts the illiterate and the educated differently. The overall leisure activity, the cognitive leisure activity and social leisure activity may predict the four-item cognitive function (global cognitive function, short-item memory, perpetual speed and executive function) for illiterate older adults; while only cognitive leisure activity predict the four-item cognitive function for educated. In both of them, the cognitive leisure activity is the largest predict factor of cognitive function.(6) Leisure activity partly mediate the relationship between education and cognitive function (global cognitive function, short-item memory, perpetual speed and executive function):Education not only directly influence cognitive function, but also indirectly impact the cognitive function through leisure activity.