SISSA Studies Tie Cognitive Reserve and Emotional Intelligence to Preserved Verbal Fluency and Working Memory After Age 65

{"Researchers tested older adults on verbal fluency in the first 10 seconds of tasks and on working memory while measuring cognitive reserve via education, occupation, and leisure activities. Positive emotion words were retrieved faster than negative ones, and higher emotional intelligence shaped responses to affective stimuli. These patterns held after controlling for basic demographics.","The data showed participants with top-quartile cognitive reserve performed comparably to younger adults on initial word search, while low-reserve peers exhibited clear slowing. Emotional intelligence scores correlated with both speed and accuracy on emotional working-memory trials. Both studies formed part of Italy’s Age-It program on population aging.","These results extend Yaakov Stern’s cognitive-reserve framework by demonstrating that emotional processing resources interact with, rather than merely add to, accumulated mental capital. Prior observational work in the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention had already flagged education and social engagement; the SISSA findings specify mechanisms in language and short-term memory and flag the first 10-second window as a sensitive probe.","Next steps include longitudinal tracking within Age-It and a planned randomized trial of targeted emotional-intelligence training to test whether gains transfer to everyday cognitive tasks over 18 months."}