Abstract
Objective
In this paper we investigated the question, how do older women who drink moderate amounts of alcohol differ from those who do not drink on measurements of cognitive function, memory, affect and health?
Methods
The nonprobability sample of female participants (nβ=β182) averaged 75 years of age and had a Mini Mental State Examination scores of 28. The participants were asked to indicate whether they drank alcohol or abstained (yes/no) and if they indicated that they did drink, to describe how many drinks they consumed in a given period of time (day/week/month).
Results
None of the participants acknowledged drinking more than 2 drinks a day. Caucasian women had the largest number of moderate drinkers (53% vs 47%), while the majority of AfricanβAmerican and Hispanic women reported not drinking. The moderate drinkers reported less depression, had higher selfβreported health, performed better on instrumental everyday tasks, had stronger memory selfβefficacy, and used more strategies to improve memory performance. In addition, these women had higher performance on tests of executive function: attention, concentration, psychomotor skills, verbalβassociative capacities, and oral fluency.
Conclusions
The circumstances under which people drink are complex and were not evaluated in this study. Therefore, rather than endorsing drinking behavior, these findings suggest that future research might examine why elders make the decision to drink, the circumstances that predispose women to drink (alone/with others), and other qualities that characterize female drinkers over the age of 65. Copyright Β© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.