The Effects of Playing Mahjong on The Cognitive Function of Elderly People in China

Abstract

The proportion of elderly people in China has increased due to an ageing population. Cognitive decline in the elderly has become a major threat to public health, including MCI (mild cognitive impairment), cognitive impairment and even Alzheimer’s dementia. Objective: To investigate whether the leisure activity of mahjong affects cognitive function in today’s older adults, and whether this effect has long-term benefits. Methods: The article comprehensively searched Google Scholar, PubMed and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), through these searches, we can obtain data, screen, organize and summarize the data, and finally analyze it. Results: The experimental data were collected in China, with 45 records identified through targeted searches, 26 of which were reviewed in full text and 12 ultimately selected for inclusion. Although the measures used in the various literature studies varied, 58.3% of the literature used the MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination), a scale of cognitive functioning. All selected experimental results in the literature suggest that playing mahjong has more or less significant effects on cognitive function. The sample sizes of the references ranged from a low of 38 to a high of 38,582, with more women than men in five-sixths of the experimental samples. Conclusion: The sustained beneficial effects observed on cognitive performance indicators suggest that mahjong has the potential to be an effective intervention for the maintenance and improvement of cognitive performance in older populations.