BACKGROUND: Neuropsychologically intact older adults who report experiencing subjective cognitive decline (SCD) likely draw on daily experiences of cognitive difficulties as an indicator of worsening cognitive functioning. Specifically, the frequency of problems (e.g., memory lapses, difficulty planning) and/or the degree that these problems interfere with their daily activities may play a role in their perception of cognitive changes. The current study examined differences in daily cognitive difficulties in older adults without SCD compared to those with SCD or MCI.
METHOD: Participants (n=212, Mage=76.97 years, range: 70-90, 65% female, 50% White) completed a battery of objective cognitive performance tasks, psychosocial questionnaires, and they self-reported experience of and interference from cognitive difficulties each day for 14 days (via smartphones). Fifty-seven participants were classified as having mild cognitive impairment (MCI) using the Jak, Bondi (2009) criteria. One hundred and three participants not classified as MCI were classified as SCD as they reported their memory functioning worsening in the past 5 years. The remaining 52 participants with no SCD were normal controls. Generalized linear modeling was used to predict total number of and average interference from memory lapses and general thinking problems from daily reports.
RESULT: After accounting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, and depressive symptoms, cognitively normal participants with SCD and those with MCI reported significantly more everyday cognitive difficulties compared to cognitively normal participants without SCD (Figures 1-3). The MCI and SCD groups did not differ from each other (p’s>.07). For retrospective memory lapses and general thinking problems, normal controls reported significantly lower interference than participants with SCD and those with MCI (p’s>.02; Figures 5 and 6). For prospective memory lapses, only participants with MCI reported significantly higher interference than normal controls (p=.01; Figure 4).
CONCLUSION: Compared to participants without SCD, participants with SCD and those with MCI reported more frequent everyday cognitive problems and that problems were more likely to interfere in daily activities. Everyday cognitive difficulties may differentiate those individuals more likely to develop functional impairments related to declining cognition. Difficulties meeting daily cognitive demands has the potential to interfere with the ability of older adults to safely live independently.
