COMMON MEMORY ERRORS. SUBJECTIVE REPORTS OF YOUNG AND OLDER HEALTHY ADULTS

Self-reports of cognitive lapses are important part of clinical assessments and research studies. The aims of this study were (1) to determine whether there will be a difference in subjective memory errors between healthy highly educated young and older adults, (2) to find about the self-reports in older population, and (3) to test whether the subjective and objective memory performance correlated in the older persons. The young adult sample (YA) included 48 students of medicine with no mental or neurological disorder in their history. Altogether 539 cognitively normal older persons (OA) were recruited. There were 249 young-old (Y-O) persons, aged 60-74 years (57 with a university degree: Y-O-UD). Then there were 290 old-old persons aged 75+ years (50 with a university degree: O-O-UD). Everyday Memory Questionnaire Revised (EMQ-R) was used as a measure of self-report of memory errors. Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS15) was used to assess depressive symptomatology. Several cognitive tests were used for memory-related performance, such as Mini-Mental State Examination, Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Logical Memory Subtest (WMS III-abr), Verbal Fluency Semantic and Phonemic, Philadelphia Verbal Learning Test and Boston Naming Test. (1) YA did not differ significantly from OA-UD, either from any subsample, in their reported EMQ-R scores. (2) Education or gender did not correlate significantly with EMQ-R in OA. We found significant correlation of EMQ-R and age in OA, the O-O reported significantly more memory lapses than Y-O. We found a weak, but significant correlation of depressive symptomatology with age and also with EMQ-R. (3) We did not find a significant correlation between the subjective and objective performance in memory-related cognitive tests in either subsample of OA. Objective performance had an association with depressive symptomatology in OA. Self-observation of memory lapses seems the same in young and old age. Its role may play the demands of lifestyle in each stage of life, when better cognitive functioning and higher cognitive demands produce similar amount of lapses as lower cognitive demands and normally declined cognitive functioning in old age retirement. On the other hand, there might be a life-long association with depressive symptomatology, which our study could not control for due to unavailability of data.