The high prevalence of sleep disruption among older adults may have implications for cognitive aging, particularly for higher-order aspects of cognition. One domain where sleep disruption may contribute to age-related deficits is prospective memory-the ability to remember to perform deferred actions at the appropriate time in the future. Community-dwelling older adults (55-93 years, N = 133) undertook assessment of sleep using actigraphy and participated in a laboratory-based prospective memory task. After controlling for education, sleep disruption (longer awakenings) was associated with poorer prospective memory. Additionally, longer awakenings mediated the relationship between older age and poorer prospective memory. Other metrics of sleep disruption, including sleep efficiency and wake after sleep onset, were not related to prospective memory, suggesting that examining the features of individual wake episodes rather than total wake time may help clarify relationships between sleep and cognition. The mediating role of awakening length was partially a function of greater depression and poorer executive function (shifting) but not retrospective memory. This study is among the first to examine the association between objectively measured sleep and prospective memory in older adults. Furthermore, this study is novel in suggesting sleep disruption might contribute to age-related prospective memory deficits; perhaps, with implications for cognitive aging more broadly. Our results suggest that there may be opportunities to prevent prospective memory decline by treating sleep problems.
Objective Provide updated older adult (ages 60+) normative data for the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), Form A, using regression techniques, and corrected for education, age, and gender. Method Participants (aged 60–93 years; N = 415) were recruited through the Healthy Ageing Research Program (HARP), University of Western Australia, and completed Form A of the RBANS as part of a wider neuropsychological test battery. Regression-based techniques were used to generate normative data rather than means-based methods. This methodology allows for the control of demographic variables using continuous data. To develop norms, the data were assessed for: (1) normality; (2) associations between each subtest score and age, education, and gender; (3) the effect of age, education, and gender on subtest scores; and (4) residual scores which were converted to percentile distributions. Results Differences were noted between the three samples, some of which were small and may not represent a clinically meaningful difference. Younger age, more years of education, and female gender were associated with better scores on most subtests. Frequency distributions, means, and standard deviations were produced using unstandardized residual scores to remove the effects of age, education, and gender. Conclusions These normative data expand upon past work by using regression-based techniques to generate norms, presenting percentiles, as well as means and standard deviations, correcting for the effect of gender, and providing a free-to-use Excel macro to calculate percentiles.
Objective: Sleep quantity and quality are associated with executive function (EF) in experimental studies, and in individuals with sleep disorders. With advancing age, sleep quantity and quality decline, as does the ability to perform EF tasks, suggesting that sleep disruption may contribute to age-related EF declines. This cross-sectional cohort study tested the hypothesis that poorer sleep quality (i.e., the frequency and duration of awakenings) and/or quantity may partly account for age-related EF deficits. Method: Community-dwelling older adults (N = 184) completed actigraphic sleep monitoring then a range of EF tasks. Two EF factors were extracted using exploratory structural equation modeling. Sleep variables did not mediate the relationship between age and EF factors. Post hoc moderated mediation analyses were conducted to test whether cognitive reserve compensates for sleep-related EF deficits, using years of education as a proxy measure of cognitive reserve. Results: We found a significant interaction between cognitive reserve and the number and frequency of awakenings, explaining a small (approximately 3%), but significant amount of variance in EF. Specifically, in individuals with fewer than 11 years of education, greater sleep disturbance was associated with poorer EF, but sleep did not impact EF in those with more education. There was no association between age and sleep quantity. Conclusions: This study highlights the role of cognitive reserve in the sleep–EF relationship, suggesting individuals with greater cognitive reserve may be able to counter the impact of disturbed sleep on EF. Therefore, improving sleep may confer some protection against EF deficits in vulnerable older adults.
Objective Despite its brevity and face validity, little is known about the construct validity of the naturalistic “Key Task” of prospective memory (PM), in which an examinee is instructed to remind the examiner at a designated time to retrieve keys (or another belonging) placed out of sight. Method Study 1 included 162 HIV+ and 52 HIV− comparison participants who completed the Key Task alongside well-validated measures of PM and a comprehensive neuropsychological battery that included everyday functioning measures. Study 2 used broadly parallel methods in 168 older community-dwelling Australians. Results Overall, the Key Task was not reliably associated with neurocognitive functioning (including clinical and experimental measures of PM), PM symptoms, or everyday functioning in either sample. Conclusions The Key Task did not demonstrate compelling evidence of construct validity among persons living with HIV disease or older adults, which raises doubts regarding its clinical usefulness as a measure of PM.
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