Cognitive decline in the ageing population : effects of type 2 diabetes

Abstract

This experiment tested the effects of Type 2 Diabetes on the rate of cognitive decline in the elderly. A convenience sample of 40 participants (20 diabetics and 20 non-diabetics of mixed gender) underwent four memory tasks which examined four different cognitive domains. Episodic memory was tested by the Word List Recall task, Perceptual Speed was tested by the Number Matching task, Semantic Memory was tested by the Category task and Executive Functioning was tested by the Sentence Completion task. The battery of tests was conducted in one session with a five minute break in between each test. Diabetic participants had lower mean scores than non- diabetics in each test and performed significantly worse in the tests for episodic memory and perceptual speed. The level of significance was taken at .05 and a 95% confidence interval was used. Results show that Type 2 diabetes negatively effects episodic memory and perceptual speed in the elderly, thus indicating a faster rate of global cognitive decline in Type 2 diabetics. However, further research is necessary so as to better assess the degree to which Type 2 diabetes actually affects the cognitive domains and to examine the impact of comorbidities and diabetic severity, duration and treatment.