Decomposing the relationship between cognitive functioning and self-referent memory beliefs in older adulthood: what’s memory got to do with it?

Abstract

With advancing age, episodic memory performance shows marked declines along with concurrent reports of lower subjective memory beliefs. Given that normative age-related declines in episodic memory co-occur with declines in other cognitive domains, we examined the relationship between memory beliefs and multiple domains of cognitive functioning. Confirmatory bi-factor structural equation models were used to parse the shared and independent variance among factors representing episodic memory, psychomotor speed, and executive reasoning in one large cohort study (Senior Odyssey, N = 462), and replicated using another large cohort of healthy older adults (ACTIVE, N = 2,802). Accounting for a general fluid cognitive functioning factor (comprised of the shared variance among measures of episodic memory, speed, and reasoning) attenuated the relationship between objective memory performance and subjective memory beliefs in both samples. Moreover, the general cognitive functioning factor was the strongest predictor of memory beliefs in both samples. These findings are consistent with the notion that dispositional memory beliefs may reflect perceptions of cognition more broadly. This may be one reason why memory beliefs have broad predictive validity for interventions that target fluid cognitive ability.

Is subjective memory specific for memory performance or general across cognitive domains? Findings from the Seattle Longitudinal Study.

“…We note that our cross-sectional results diverge somewhat from Payne et al (2017), who found that, using a Schmid-Leiman type model, that the standardized effect of a general cognitive factor for subjective memory was .19 in one sample and .45 in another, whereas the standardized effect of the residual memory factor, after extracting “ g ,” was .07 in both factors. They chose to emphasize the difference in these magnitudes.…”

“…A different hypothesis on memory specificity of subjective memory was offered in a recent study by Payne and colleagues (2017). They observed that the cross-sectional association between memory performance and subjective memory was greatly attenuated after controlling for a factor of general cognitive ability, comprised of episodic memory, psychomotor speed, and executive reasoning.…”

“…Early evidence indicated that metamemory questionnaires had spotty and inconsistent relationships with other cognitive abilities, including measures of reasoning, verbal ability, and ideational fluency (e.g., Dixon, Hertzog, & Hultsch, 1986), typically with nonsignificant correlations. However, some more recent evidence suggests that subjective memory is weakly related to both memory performance and to other cognitive ability measures, such as executive function or language at cross-section (e.g., Payne et al, 2017; Steinberg et al, 2013).…”

Cross-lagged relationships between sense of purpose in life, memory performance, and subjective memory beliefs in adulthood over a 9-year interval

“…Recent evidence suggests that subjective memory beliefs might actually correspond better to broad cognitive functioning in general than to specific memory functioning (Payne et al, 2017). Notwithstanding the modest associations between subjective and objective memory, however, there is some evidence that the relation holds over time.…”

Daily cognitive complaints and engagement in older adulthood: Personality traits are more predictive than cognitive performance.

“…For instance, measures of memory self-efficacy often hold only modest associations with actual memory performance (Beaudoin & Desrichard, 2011). Moreover, memory self-efficacy beliefs may fail to predict memory performance at all, once one accounts for a general cognitive composite (Payne et al, 2017). One concern though is that these studies typically involve single assessments of self-reported cognitive complaints (or capabilities), and it has been shown that complaints are variable from one day to the next (Aschwanden et al, 2019).…”