March 15, 2006 | Brooklyn College
Brooklyn, NY — Daytime television has been a source of entertainment for many years. Talk shows provide in-depth interviews and true-life stories that touch our hearts. Soap operas allow us to escape into fantasy worlds of love and miracles, where a person can fall off a cliff one week and come back to life the next. But according to a study by Joshua Fogel, Ph.D., of Brooklyn College, elderly women who choose these types of television shows as their favorites have poorer memory, attention, and cognition than that of women who choose other types of programs as their favorites.
Dr. Fogel, an assistant professor in the business program in the Department of Economics at Brooklyn College led the study. Michelle Carlson, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins University is the coauthor. Their findings will be published in the March 2006 issue of the Southern Medical Journal. This study included 289 women between the ages of 70 and 79 who were part of the Women’s Health and Aging Study II. Participants underwent a comprehensive cognitive screening battery that assessed attention, short- and long-term memory, and cognition. Cognition was measured with the Mini Mental State Examination, a commonly used cognitive screening tool in clinical practice.
Participants had minimal to no reported difficulty with mobility and exercise tolerance, upper extremity tasks, and higher functioning tasks, such as shopping and basic self-care. Women with dementia were not part of this study cohort.
Participants were asked how many hours they watched television in a normal day and to indicate their favorite type of TV program. Among the choices besides talk shows and soap operas were: detective and adventure, game shows, news, documentaries or discussions, variety shows with lots of guests, nature shows, mysteries, comedies, Westerns, sports, shopping channel, movies, and other.
Women who chose talk shows or soap operas as their favorite type of television shows consistently achieved poorer scores on the cognitive tests. Similar results were maintained in the variety of statistical models considering the potential impact of medical illness, depressive symptoms, and cognitive decline. In analyses using conservative cut-off points for impairment in these various cognitive categories, odds ratios for talk shows were indicative of a greater than seven-fold impairment risk for talk shows and a greater than thirteen-fold impairment risk for soap operas.
“This is the first study to report that watching and having a preference for television shows of the soap opera or talk show type are associated with reduced memory, attention, and cognition,” said Dr. Fogel.
This study has shown that specific types of TV programming are associated with poorer functioning, yet it is unclear whether watching these programs is a causal risk factor for cognitive impairment or a sign that cognitive impairment has occurred. It could be that because both these types of shows are aired during the day, the impaired cognition is a sign of a sedentary lifestyle. Or, that women with impaired cognition choose to watch these types of shows based on their repetitive structure and may not be able to understand more complex programming.
Now that this study has shed light on the relationship between television programming and cognition, more research would be useful with sample sizes including men, more extensive questions regarding TV use, and studying how shows affect people over time. At this time, these results may be useful to help physicians assess the mental ability of their patients.
“In interviewing elderly women, physicians may want to ask a relatively simple question, ‘What is your favorite type of television show?’” Dr. Fogel said. “For those whose answer is soap operas or talk shows, the physicians may want to pay attention to cognitive screening at this time and at future clinical interviews.” This approach may provide a means of early detection of worsening cognitive abilities in elderly women.
Full text of the article is available from Dr. Fogel. Dr. Fogel can be contacted at joshua.fogel@gmail.com or at (718) 951-3857 for interviews about his work.