(PS1-D78) Attitudes of Aging and Cognitive Concerns in Community-dwelling Older Adults with Subjective Cognitive Decline

It is common for older adults to experience a self-perceived decline in thinking processes that is typically reported in the memory domain (Reisberg et al., 2010). Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is a risk factor for future pathological cognitive decline such as mild cognitive impairment and dementia (Chapman et al., 2022; Weissberger et al., 2022). Older adults with SCD can have an increased risk for experiencing lower levels of life satisfaction (Weissberger et al., 2022). Previous research suggests that there is a link between cognitive concerns and beliefs about aging, which might partially explain the relation between SCD and life satisfaction. Attitudes of aging (AoA) is characterized by an idiosyncratic dynamic self-evaluation towards aging over the course of life (Laidlaw et al., 2018). Individuals’ AoA can have important impacts on well-being, including physical and mental health (Chapman et al., 2022). It is understood that there is a relationship between SCD and AoA; however, elucidation is warranted to further understand the strength and direction of the link between SCD and AoA.
 

The purpose of this investigation is to learn how AoA is related to SCD in older adults. We predicted that older adults with more complaints of subjective cognitive decline would have more negative AoA. Participants for this study were selected from a larger study of SCD and mental health. A total of 50 gender-identifying women (78.0%) and men (22.0%) aged 60 and older (mean age 70.83) were included in the current analysis. A Qualtrics survey was self-administered remotely, which included the Short Form of the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire (AAQ-SF) and the Subjective Cognitive Decline Questionnaire (SCD-Q), which assesses the number of concerns across multiple domains of cognition for a total number of subjective cognitive concerns.
 

Results revealed there was a significant large negative correlation between AoA and SCD, r(21) = -.63, p < .001, indicating more positive AoA were associated with fewer cognitive concerns. In particular, the domain of psychological growth on the AAQ had the largest significant negative correlation to SCD (r=-.66) in comparison to the other two domains, psychosocial loss (r=.60) and physical change (r=-.50) on the AAQ-SF. Age and gender-identity did not have a significant association to SCD or AoA. Findings from this study indicate that in a sample of older adults with SCD, AoA were strongly related to a number of cognitive concerns. Older adults with more negative AoA across the domains of psychological growth, psychosocial loss, and physical changes had higher levels of SCD. This study highlights the importance of identifying levels of SCD and AoA to better understand how this relationship is impacting older adults’ well-being. Although additional studies are needed to clarify the direction of the effect, AoA may be a modifiable risk factor for SCD that could represent a treatment target to improve quality of life among older adults with SCD.