Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Gerontology and Vulnerability, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2023 Feb;45(1):69-83. doi: 10.1080/13803395.2023.2195618. Epub 2023 Apr 4.
Depression has been associated with impairments in different cognitive domains in younger adults, including prospective memory (PM; the ability to plan and execute intended actions in the future). However, it is still not well documented nor understood whether depression is also associated with impaired PM in older adults. The current study aimed to examine the association between depressive symptoms and PM in young-old and old-old adults, and to understand the potential influence of underlying factors, such as age, education, and metamemory representations (one's belief about their memory abilities).
Data of 394 older adults from the Vivre-Leben-Vivere study were included in the analyses ( = 80.10 years, = 6.09; range = 70-98 years).
Bayesian ANCOVA revealed a 3-way interaction between depressive symptoms, age, and metamemory representations, indicating that the association between depressive symptoms and PM performance depended on age and metamemory representations. In the lower depressive symptoms group, old-old adults with higher metamemory representations performed as well as young-old adults independently of their metamemory representations. However, in the higher depressive symptoms group, old-old adults with higher metamemory representations performed more poorly than young-old adults with higher metamemory representations.
This study indicates that metamemory representations may buffer the negative effect of age on PM performance only in old-old individuals with low depressive symptoms. Importantly, this result provides new insight into the mechanisms underlying the association between depressive symptoms and PM performance in older adults as well as into potential interventions.
抑郁症与年轻成年人不同认知领域的障碍有关，包括前瞻性记忆（PM；计划和未来执行预期行动的能力）。然而，抑郁症是否也与老年人的 PM 障碍有关，目前还没有得到很好的记录和理解。本研究旨在探讨年轻老年人和老年人抑郁症状与 PM 之间的关系，并了解潜在的影响因素，如年龄、教育和元记忆表现（一个人对自己记忆能力的信念）。
对来自 Vivre-Leben-Vivere 研究的 394 名老年人的数据进行了分析（=80.10 岁，=6.09；年龄范围为 70-98 岁）。
贝叶斯方差分析显示，抑郁症状、年龄和元记忆表现之间存在 3 种交互作用，表明抑郁症状与 PM 表现之间的关系取决于年龄和元记忆表现。在低抑郁症状组中，元记忆表现较高的老年人大致与年轻老年人一样表现良好，而与他们的元记忆表现无关。然而，在高抑郁症状组中，元记忆表现较高的老年人大致比元记忆表现较高的年轻老年人表现更差。
本研究表明，元记忆表现可能仅在低抑郁症状的老年个体中缓冲年龄对 PM 表现的负面影响。重要的是，这一结果为理解老年人抑郁症状与 PM 表现之间的关系以及潜在的干预措施提供了新的见解。
