Linked lives is a key tenet of the life course framework: Individuals age and develop in the comp... more Linked lives is a key tenet of the life course framework: Individuals age and develop in the company of a social convoy, or core set of relationships. The quality and quantity of relationships with friends and family are well-known predictors of physical and mental health outcomes, with research on how relationships affect cognitive health just beginning to blossom. This symposium presents four sociological studies of how positive and negative experiences in central, long-term personal relationships – marriages, parent-adult child relationships, and friendships – relate to cognition and the development of cognitive impairment over long periods of the life course, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS). Stokes, Prasad, and Barooah find that experiences of loneliness in marriage are negatively related both to one’s own cognition and to the spouse’s cognition. Herd and Sicinski also highlight potential negative and gendered aspe...
Evidence has been steadily increasing about the benefit of social connectedness for healthy aging... more Evidence has been steadily increasing about the benefit of social connectedness for healthy aging. Yet, thanks to the complexity of human social interactions, it remains difficult to pinpoint specific benefits and mechanisms by which such benefits emerge. We offer this symposium to address this issue by presenting new findings from ongoing work at Indiana University in collaboration with the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. First, an overview of recent literature will be presented alongside a brief introduction to egocentric network analysis and its utility in probing social determinants of health. Next, we turn our attention to characteristics of social networks and their importance for cognitive health in later life. Different types of social enrichment will be evaluated in terms of their respective influence on cognitive reserve (i.e., neuropsychological evaluations, brain health). Additional attention will be paid to the comparison of emotionally supportive (i.e., so...
Linked lives is a key tenet of the life course framework: Individuals age and develop in the comp... more Linked lives is a key tenet of the life course framework: Individuals age and develop in the company of a social convoy, or core set of relationships. The quality and quantity of relationships with friends and family are well-known predictors of physical and mental health outcomes, with research on how relationships affect cognitive health just beginning to blossom. This symposium presents four sociological studies of how positive and negative experiences in central, long-term personal relationships – marriages, parent-adult child relationships, and friendships – relate to cognition and the development of cognitive impairment over long periods of the life course, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS). Stokes, Prasad, and Barooah find that experiences of loneliness in marriage are negatively related both to one’s own cognition and to the spouse’s cognition. Herd and Sicinski also highlight potential negative and gendered aspe...
Evidence has been steadily increasing about the benefit of social connectedness for healthy aging... more Evidence has been steadily increasing about the benefit of social connectedness for healthy aging. Yet, thanks to the complexity of human social interactions, it remains difficult to pinpoint specific benefits and mechanisms by which such benefits emerge. We offer this symposium to address this issue by presenting new findings from ongoing work at Indiana University in collaboration with the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. First, an overview of recent literature will be presented alongside a brief introduction to egocentric network analysis and its utility in probing social determinants of health. Next, we turn our attention to characteristics of social networks and their importance for cognitive health in later life. Different types of social enrichment will be evaluated in terms of their respective influence on cognitive reserve (i.e., neuropsychological evaluations, brain health). Additional attention will be paid to the comparison of emotionally supportive (i.e., so...
Uploads
Papers by Lucas Hamilton