Association of Psychological distress and Physical Health with Subjective and Objective Memory in Older Adults

Abstract

Objectives To investigate how indicators of psychological stress and physical health differentially influence subjective and objective memory in older adults. Methods: 404 adults aged ≥55 without cognitive impairment participated in remote assessment of physical health (PHY; multimorbidity, body-mass-index), psychological distress (PDS; perceived stress, anxiety, depression), subjective memory complaints (SM), and task-based objective memory performance (OM). Results: Separately, both PHY and PDS significantly predicted SM ( p < 0.01), but only PHY was associated with OM ( p = 0.05). Combined models showed that PHY and PDS maintained significant association with SM ( p < 0.01, R2 = 0.30), while only PHY was associated with OM ( p = .07, R2 = 0.03; for associative OM, p = 0.04). Discussion: SM is associated with participants’ psychological profile, highlighting the importance of addressing these factors when assessing SM. The results also reveal that remotely-administered OM tasks are more immune to participants’ psychological profile, and support previously-established links between physical health and objective and subjective memory function.