Distance from home and working memory: daily associations varying by neighborhood environments in community-dwelling older adults

Abstract

Out-of-home mobility and neighborhood environment have been, respectively, shown to be associated with older adults’ cognitive abilities and they may have combined effects. Adopting an ecological perspective to mobility–cognition associations, this study examined daily maximum distance from home in relation to daily working memory performance in community-dwelling older adults and the moderation effect of neighborhood environments. Analyses included data over 947 days from 109 Swiss older adults aged 65 to 89 years. Over two weeks, participants wore a custom-built mobile GPS tracker and completed a smartphone-based numerical memory updating task seven times per day. Daily maximum distance from home was extracted from the GPS data. Neighborhood environments were assessed with the Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale at baseline. Multilevel models showed that maximum distance from home was not associated with working memory performance, but there were cross-level moderation effects of neighborhood environments. Daily maximum distance from home was positively (vs. negatively) associated with daily working memory performance in participants who lived in neighborhoods with more (vs. fewer) places for walking and cycling and higher (vs. lower) land use mix-diversity. Out-of-home mobility and neighborhood environment could have combined effects on older adults’ cognitive abilities. Neighborhoods with more places for walking and biking or having a higher mixture of land use could enhance a positive association between traveling a far distance from home and working memory performance.