Social
The association of childhood family connectedness and life-course memory function Yingyan Wu* Yingyan Wu Wu Boston University School of Public Health
Childhood family connectedness is linked to better later-life cognition, yet its multidimensional nature makes it unclear which components matter most in shaping cognitive aging. This study aims to identify key aspects of childhood family connectedness and quantify their associations with later-life cognition. We used data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Childhood family connectedness was defined using self-reported relationship variables [relationships with parents (good versus fair/poor), being raised by biological parents, history of being hit by siblings] and support variables [childhood food security, maternal care or expression of love, parents working to support the family, and childhood education interruption]. Cognitive outcomes were predicted episodic memory scores (average of immediate and delayed word recall scores; range: 0-10) at ages 50 and 65. We adjusted for age, sex, childhood rural/urban residence, childhood residential region, and birth order (first or not) as confounders. We ranked relative variable importance based on percent increase in mean squared error (%IncMSE) using random forest models, followed by estimated associations for the most influential factors with memory scores using linear regression. We included 16,396 participants (mean age=61.2 years, 51.3% women) with interquartile ranges of 4.64-6.27 and 3.14-4.84 for memory scores at ages 50 and 65, respectively. Relationships with parents emerged as the most influential factors (Figure). Good relationships with mother were associated with higher memory scores at ages 50 (b=0.17, 95% CI 0.08, 0.26) and 65 (b=0.15, 0.07, 0.23). Similarly, good relationships with father were associated with higher memory scores at ages 50 (b=0.12, 95% CI 0.04, 0.20) and 65 (b=0.13, 95% CI 0.05, 0.20) higher scores at ages 50 and 65, respectively. These findings highlight that perceived relationships with parents may be a key pathway shaping cognitive health later in life.
