Poster Session 05 Program Schedule
02/15/2024
02:30 pm - 03:45 pm
Room: Majestic Complex (Posters 61-120)
Poster Session 05: Neuropsychiatry | Addiction/Dependence | Stress/Coping | Emotional/Social Processes
Final Abstract #69
General vs. Age-Anchored Measures of Subjective Decline: Relationships with Depression and Anxiety
Hannah Lovato, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, United States
Ross Divers, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, United States
Matthew Calamia, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, United States
Category: Mood and Anxiety Disorders
Keyword 1: anxiety
Keyword 2: depression
Keyword 3: memory complaints
Objective:
Subjective cognition can be assessed in multiple ways including both age-anchored and general measures. Age-anchored measures have participants account for what would be typical cognitive concerns adjusted for their age group and are typically better predictors of objective cognitive decline than measures which assess subjective complaints in general (Chapman et al., 2021). There is a robust literature on the relationships of psychological symptoms, including depression, with subjective cognition but work has not examined whether the magnitude of relationships varies depending on the method of assessment. The aim of this study was to compare age-anchored and general measures of subjective cognition in their relationship with depression and anxiety self-report symptoms.
Participants and Methods:
N=368 older adults, average age 65 (SD: 4.99) were administered an age-anchored measure of subjective cognitive complaints (SCD; Chapman et al., 2021) and the Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire Ability subscale (MMQ; Troyer & Rich, 2018) which assesses memory complaints in general. Participants were also administered the Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS) and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS).
Results:
Both subjective cognitive measures were highly correlated with each other (r=.83, p<.001). GDS and GAS were highly correlated with SCD (GDS: r= .580, p<.001; GAS: r=.548, p<.001). GAS and GDS were also highly correlated with MMQ (GDS: r=.526, p<.001; GAS: r=.530, p<.001; GDSxGAS: p<.001). GDS and GAS served as highly significant predictors of both SCD and MMQ (ps<.001). Given how closely correlated SCD and MMQ were with each other, comparisons were made between each correlation of each psychological measure and each subjective cognitive concern measure using t-tests for dependent correlations: no significant differences were found between any comparison (all p > 0.05) indicating a high degree of similarity between SCD and MMQ as in their association with the GAS and GDS.
Conclusions:
Depression and anxiety are often related to subjective cognitive concerns as typically assessed by ratings of how often problems are experienced in daily life or individual decline over time. Age-anchored subjective cognitive measures have been used less in the literature; however, these measures have been previously found to have some benefits over other types of subjective measures in detecting early cognitive decline. The results of the current study showed that age-anchored measures are as strongly associated with depression and anxiety as more widely used general concern ratings. Therefore, clinicians should take into account depression and anxiety in interpreting ratings on age-anchored measures in a similar way to other types of measures of subjective cognition.
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