A new study suggests that cognitive aging doesn’t follow the same pattern across all Asian American communities, adding to growing evidence that broad racial categories can mask important differences in dementia risk and cognitive decline.
Researchers analyzed data from 875 older adults who identified as Asian American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (AANHPI) and found meaningful differences in executive function among Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander or other Asian participants. The findings were published in the Nature Portfolio journal npj Dementia.
The study combined data from two Northern California research projects, KHANDLE and LifeAfter90. Participants were 82 years old on average, with Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and other AANHPI groups represented.
Researchers said many earlier studies treated AANHPI populations as a single group, making it harder to identify differences in cognitive health among individual communities.
At the beginning of the study, Filipino participants had the lowest executive function scores of the four groups. Over an average follow-up of about two and a half years, Filipino and Japanese participants also experienced faster declines in executive function than Chinese participants.
Not every measure showed the same pattern. Researchers found no significant differences among the groups in verbal episodic memory, which reflects a person’s ability to learn and later recall information.
The team also explored whether acculturation-related factors, including where participants were born, their first language and their level of education, were linked to cognitive performance.
Participants born in the United States generally started the study with higher executive function scores than those born elsewhere. At the same time, U.S.-born participants tended to experience steeper declines over the course of the study. A participant’s first language, however, did not appear to change the relationship between ethnic subgroups and cognitive performance.
Education was also associated with cognitive outcomes. Participants with at least a college degree generally had higher cognitive scores at the start of the study. Even so, college-educated Filipino and Japanese participants experienced faster declines in executive function than those with less education.
The differences were most apparent among participants in the LifeAfter90 study, which follows adults ages 90 and older.
The researchers noted several limitations. All participants lived in Northern California, had long been members of Kaiser Permanente Northern California and spoke English or Spanish. Those factors may limit how well the findings apply to other Asian American and Pacific Islander populations. The average follow-up period was also relatively short.
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