Age does not matter: Memory complaints are related to negative affect throughout adulthood

Abstract

Objectives: Memory complaints are present in adults of all ages but are only weakly related to objective memory deficits, raising the question of what their presence may indicate. In older adults, memory complaints are moderately related to negative affect, but there is little research examining this relationship in young and middle-aged adults. This study examined whether memory complaints and negative affect were similarly related across the adult lifespan and in adults with varying levels of objective memory performance.

Method: The sample included 3798 healthy adults, aged 18 to 99, and was divided into five groups: young, middle-aged, young-old, old-old, and oldest-old adults. Participants completed questionnaire measures of memory complaints and negative affect (neuroticism and depressive and anxiety symptoms), in addition to lab measures of objective memory.

Results: Using structural equation models, we found that the relationship between memory complaints and negative affect was moderate in all the age groups, and there was no evidence for moderation by objective memory.

Conclusion: For adults of all ages, perceived memory decline may be distressing and/or negative affect may lead to negative self-evaluations of memory.

Keywords:

• subjective memory complaint
• negative affect
• objective memory
• lifespan

Acknowledgements

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Aging or the National Institutes of Health.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The MFQ Retrospective Functioning items ask participants to rate their memory compared to different numbers of years prior (e.g., 5 years ago, 20 years ago, etc.), which raised concerns that such ratings from younger participants may not be valid (i.e., asking an 18-year-old to compare his or her memory functioning to 5 years ago is not equivalent to asking a 70-year-old the same question). For this reason, the single MAC-S item was used to represent retrospective functioning. The correlations in the different age groups between this single question and the mean for the Retrospective Functioning items from the MFQ ranged from .53 to .63.

2. Two additional sets of age groups (18–39, 40–59, 60–69, 70–99 and 18–39, 40–64, 65–99) were tested. The results for measurement invariance and the relationship between memory complaints and negative affect using these groups did not vary substantially from the results reported here.

3. Two additional sets of age groups (18–39, 40–59, 60–69, 70–99 and 18–39, 40–64, 65–99) showed the same pattern of results.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging [grant number R37AG024270] to Timothy Salthouse and [grant number R01AG033033] to Bethany Teachman.