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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1846
igaa057.1846
Abstracts
Session 5325 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Social Engagement and Cognitive Function of Older Adults in Mexico and the United States
Howrey Bret  Avila Jaqueline  Downer Brian  Wong Rebeca  
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, Texas, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”560 561
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Social engagement is linked to better cognition, but it is unclear if the social engagement of husbands and wives influences their own cognition as well as each other’s cognition in two very different country contexts. Data on married couples come from the 2001 Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) and the 2000 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), with follow-up cognition measured in 2012. Structural equation models (SEM) were used to test the actor-partner interdependence model on the association of social engagement with cognition. In Mexico wives’ social engagement benefited their own cognition as well as their husbands’, but husband’s social engagement was unrelated to cognition. In the U.S. both wives’ and husbands’ social engagement benefited their own cognition, but not each other’s. Results suggest asymmetric patterns of actor-partner interdependence in Mexico, possibly reflecting more traditional social roles of women and co-dependence within couples, but more independence within U.S. couples.