Smoking and cognitive change from age 11 to age 80

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Abstract
The Scottish Mental Survey of 1932 (SMS1932) tested mental ability in people born in 1921 (n = 87 498). The SMS1932’s Moray House test (MHT) was validated against the Stanford Binet test and includes verbal reasoning, numerical, spatial, and other items. From 1999 to 2001 we traced and retested 550 people from Edinburgh who were born in 1921 (the Lothian birth cohort 1921). All lived independently. We excluded people with mini-mental state examination scores below 24 and those with known dementia. We traced their scores on the MHT from SMS1932, readministered the MHT using the same instructions and time limit as the SMS1932, and collected information on smoking. In all, 470 people (194 men) provided full data.