Lower health literacy and weaker cognitive abilities are associated with poorer performance on common healthcare tasks¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2012 · checked against its sources 2026-10-19 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Lower health literacy and weaker fluid and crystallized abilities were associated with poorer performance on healthcare tasks spanning comprehending print, recalling spoken and multimedia information, dosing and organizing medication, and healthcare problem-solving. → Wolf 2012

Evidence¶

Wolf 2012¶

Wolf, M.S., Curtis, L.M., Wilson, E.A.H., et al. (2012). Literacy, Cognitive Function, and Health: Results of the LitCog Study. J GEN INTERN MED. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-012-2079-4

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Analysis of performance on common health tasks in the LitCog study (n = 882 older adults), globally assessed and categorized into five task domains including comprehending print information and dosing and organizing medication. The article reports regression estimates for the health literacy association, which was substantially reduced once cognitive abilities entered the model (without cognitive abilities: β = −28.9, 95% CI −31.4 to −26.4; with them: β = −8.5, 95% CI −10.9 to −6.0); the text does not say on what scale these coefficients are expressed, so no impact code is assigned.

"Lower health literacy and weaker fluid and crystallized abilities were associated with poorer performance on healthcare tasks."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Academic and Critical Literacy — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes
• General Cognitive Ability — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes

Related Claims¶

• Health literacy measures are strongly correlated with fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities in older adults — related
• The association between health literacy and health task performance is substantially reduced after adjusting for cognitive abilities — related
• Creativity, crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence and executive functions are all correlated in children aged 8 to 13 — related
• Poorer past cognitive functioning (measured 10 years earlier) is associated with low health literacy in older adults — related
• Poorer current cognitive functioning in all domains is associated with low health literacy in older adults — related
• Participants with low health literacy had poorer cognitive functioning in all domains and were more often (very) low-educated — related
• In children, shifting is a more powerful predictor of creativity than fluid and crystallized intelligence — related
• Advance organizers produce a small average learning benefit, larger for high-ability than for low-ability learners — related
• Higher total literacy is associated with higher global cognition and all five specific cognitive abilities in older adults without dementia — related
• Measures of everyday functioning and independent living correlate with psychometric cognition, with stronger relations for fluid reasoning than for crystallized knowledge — related
• Financial literacy, but not health literacy, is associated with mental health indices in older adults without dementia — related
• Common health literacy measures largely detect individual differences in cognitive abilities — related