Departments of Clinical Studies and Statistics, Radiation Effects Research Foundation, 5-2 Hijiyama Park, Minami-ku, Hiroshima 732-0815, Japan.
Department of Biostatistics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR 72205, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Feb 1;16(3):421. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16030421.
In an aged Japanese population, we investigated associations of demographic variables with subjective neurocognitive complaints using the Neurocognitive Questionnaire (NCQ).
Participants ( = 649) provided answers to the NCQ in both 2011 and 2013. Using fully-completed NCQs from 503 participants in 2011, we identified latent factors of subjective neurocognitive complaints using exploratory factor analysis; then examined associations of demographic variables with the identified factors for all 649 participants over the two years. We also examined changes in factor scores over the 2-year period.
We identified four factors representing 20 of the 25 NCQ items and labelled them metacognition, emotional regulation, motivation/organization, and processing speed. In a regression model using all participants, we observed linear deterioration with age on emotional regulation and linear-quadratic deterioration with age on the other factors. Less education was associated with more problems for all factors, but we detected no evidence of interaction between age and education. In 314 participants completing both assessments, paired -tests comparing the 2013 to 2011 responses corroborated the regression results, except for emotional regulation.
On the NCQ, older age and less education were associated with more subjective neurocognitive complaints. This is compatible with the association of the same factors with objective cognition and suggests that subjective cognitive complaints complement objective cognition as a prodrome of non-normative cognitive decline.
在日本老年人群中，我们使用神经认知问卷（Neurocognitive Questionnaire，NCQ）调查了人口统计学变量与主观神经认知主诉之间的关联。
参与者（n=649）在 2011 年和 2013 年都回答了 NCQ。我们使用 2011 年 503 名参与者完整填写的 NCQ，通过探索性因子分析确定主观神经认知主诉的潜在因子；然后，在两年内对所有 649 名参与者，考察人口统计学变量与识别出的因子之间的关联。我们还检查了因子分数在 2 年期间的变化。
我们确定了四个因子，代表 25 个 NCQ 项目中的 20 个项目，并将其命名为元认知、情绪调节、动机/组织和处理速度。在使用所有参与者的回归模型中，我们观察到情绪调节与年龄呈线性恶化，而其他因子呈线性二次恶化。受教育程度较低与所有因子的问题较多有关，但我们没有发现年龄和教育程度之间存在交互作用的证据。在完成两次评估的 314 名参与者中，比较 2013 年和 2011 年的配对 t 检验结果与回归结果一致，除了情绪调节。
在 NCQ 上，年龄较大和受教育程度较低与更多的主观神经认知主诉有关。这与相同因素与客观认知的关联一致，表明主观认知主诉作为非规范认知衰退的前驱症状，与客观认知相辅相成。
