The relationship of self-reported reading habits and declarative memory

Sammanfattning: The present study examined the possibility that reading books might support declarative memory, and potentially contribute to the cognitive reserve and thereby minimize age-related decline in memory functions. It was a crosssectional study, where data were taken from 566 Betula Study participants, as well as the scores of declarative memory assessment tasks, and book reading reports. The tasks of episodic memory were sentence learning with and without encoding enactment –free and cued recall. The tasks of semantic memory were word fluency, initial letter A, M fivewords, B profession names, and SRB –vocabulary. Three-way analysis of variance was performed for hypothesis testing. The results showed that book reading might support declarative memory. There was a significant relationship between education and book reading. Was not found if book reading might minimize age-related decline. In conclusion, the study showed that book reading and years of education might support declarative memory.