The relationship between memory complaints and objective memory performance remains poorly understood, particularly in young and middle aged people. We studied the relationship between reports of memory complaints and objective memory performance, and the possibility of differentiating good and poor reporters across the lifespan based on concordance between reported abilities and objectively assessed performance. This cross-sectional study enrolled 292 healthy individuals, aged 18 to 87 years, able to perform common activities of daily living and without neurological or psychiatric conditions or systemic diseases likely to interfere with cognition. No correlation between memory complaints, as assessed by the Subjective Memory Complaints scale (SMC) score and the objective memory performance, evaluated by the long-delay free recall (LDFR) score of the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), was found, even when grouping the participants by decade. The SMC score was influenced by the presence of depressive symptoms. Participants who were more educated, female and younger tended to have a higher CVLT-LDFR score. Younger subjects were more likely to have good memory performance and report few memory complaints than older subjects. In conclusion, there are differences in the reliability of memory reporting across the lifespan, younger subjects being more likely to correctly report good memory than older subjects.
Background: Subjective memory complaints are frequently reported by the elderly. There is less information about the characterization of subjective memory complaints in young people. Objective: To determine different memory complaints between young and elderly people with the use of the Subjective Memory Complaints (SMC) scale. Methods: Participants were volunteers attending a health itinerant unit, a blood donor centre, a leisure centre for retired people, a senior citizens college or university. All participants were questioned about their own memory abilities using the SMC scale and assessed for the presence of depressive symptoms. Results: Nine-hundred and forty-six subjects aged 18–92 years were included in the study. The mean total score on the SMC scale was 4.89 ± 3.03, and 75.9% of the participants had at least minor complaints about their memory. Older people had more general memory complaints and reported they were more likely to become transiently confused, whereas younger people reported they were more frequently told by others that they were forgetful and would more often take notes. Conclusions: Memory complaints were frequent both in young and elderly subjects, but the detailed assessment revealed age-related differences in the type of complaints.
Diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment relies on the presence of memory complaints. However, memory complaints are very frequent in healthy people. The objective of this study was to determine the severity and type of memory difficulties presented by elderly patients who seek for clinical help, as compared to the memory difficulties reported by subjects in the community. Assessment of subjective memory complaints was done with the subjective memory complaints scale (SMC). The mini-mental state examination was used for general cognitive evaluation and the geriatric depression scale for the assessment of depressive symptoms. Eight-hundred and seventy-one nondemented subjects older than 50 years were included. Participants in the clinical setting had a higher total SMC score (10.3 ± 4.2) than those in the community (5.1 ± 3.0). Item 3 of the SMC, Do you ever forget names of family members or friends? contributed significantly more to the variance of the total SMC score in the clinical sample (18%) as compared to the community sample (11%). Forgetting names of family members or friends plays an important role in subjective memory complaints in the clinical setting. This symptom is possibly perceived as particularly worrisome and likely drives people to seek for clinical help.
The present study aims to investigate the protective effect of formal education on age-related changes in different cognitive domains with the hypothesis that it may attenuate the rate of decline. Individuals aged 50 years or older attending primary care physicians without known brain disease (431 participants, mostly [60.3%] female with 66.3 [±9.1] years of age and 7.7 [±4.1] years of education, on average), were evaluated with a neuropsychological battery including 28 cognitive measures. Cognitive domains identified by factor analysis were subject to repeated multiple regression analyses to determine the variance explained by age and education controlling for gender, depressive symptoms, and vascular risk factors. The slope of the regression equation was compared between two educational groups with an average of 4 years and 11 years of education, respectively. Factors identified corresponded to processing ability (Factor 1), memory (Factor 2), and acquired knowledge (Factor 3). Although education improved performance in Factors 1 and 3, it did not change the slope of age-related decline in any factor. This study suggests that in culturally heterogeneous groups, small increments in education enhance cognition but do not modify the rate of decline of executive functioning with age. These results contradict some clinical findings and need to be confirmed in longitudinal studies.
Educational attainment possibly modulates the frequency and type of SMC in normal aging. Because these complaints are a major symptom for the diagnosis of cognitive decline, it seems relevant to consider the level of education when interpreting subjective reports on memory.
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