Compensation strategies in older adults: Sociodemographic and cognitive reserve differences

The terms of cognitive reserve and compensation, have been used in a wide variety of situations in the scientific literature to refer to overcome or reduce losses or deficits in different mechanisms and processes such as memory. Through the Memory Compensation Questionnaire (MCQ), is intended to analyze the different mechanisms of compensation in relation to certain sociodemographic variables (age, gender and educational level) from a Spanish sample and establish, from a combined measure of cognitive reserve (CR), the differences between subjects with high and low reserve on using compensation mechanisms. 264 Spanish retirees were assessed. The results showed that the compensation strategies used more frequently were based on remediation and substitution mechanisms. External strategies and confidence are those that show main differences and significant correlations with sociodemographic variables. Regarding cognitive reserve, it was observed that those subjects with higher CR obtained greater use of external strategies and internal, and subjects with lower RC in effort and change.