Affective Reactivity to Daily Memory Lapses in Middle-aged and Older Adults without Cognitive Impairment: Examining the Moderating Effects of Personality and Control Beliefs about Cognitive Aging
Open Access
- Author:
- Bratlee-Whitaker, Emily
- Graduate Program:
- Nursing
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 22, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Jacqueline Mogle, Outside Field Member
Aaron Pincus, Outside Unit Member
Marie Boltz, Major Field Member
Nikki Hill, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Lisa Kitko, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Daily memory lapses
Affective reactivity
Aging
Personality
Control beliefs - Abstract:
- Experiences of memory problems (i.e., subjective memory problems) are commonly reported in individuals without cognitive impairment throughout the aging process. Subjective memory problems are consistently associated with affective symptoms (i.e., anxiety and depressive symptoms) in middle-aged and older adults. However, specific characteristics of the experience of memory problems that contribute to these associations are unclear for several reasons. First, assessment of subjective memory can ask participants to evaluate their memory functioning over months, years, or even undefined time periods. These types of assessments can introduce retrospective response biases, as they encourage participants to evaluate their memory with broad judgements. Second, assessment of subjective memory is known to be influenced by individual characteristics of personality (i.e., individual differences in patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving; McCrae & John, 1992) and control beliefs (i.e., the extent to which individuals feel they can impact things that happen in their lives; Lachman et al., 2011); these characteristics are also individually related to affective symptoms. Third, assessment of subjective memory often does not address appraisals of memory problems (i.e., the subjective severity of influence/impact of problems) or does not assess appraisals of memory problems separately from the occurrence of the problems themselves. Appraisals of memory problems are important to consider as they may contribute to the impact of subjective memory problems on affect and affective symptoms. To address the need for increased understanding of characteristics of subjective memory problems that contribute to affective symptoms, this study examined subjective memory at the daily level as occurrences and appraisals of daily memory lapses. Operationalization at the daily level can decrease the potential for biases introduced with assessment of subjective memory, as daily assessments ask participants to evaluate their memory functioning over a shorter, specific timeframe. In addition, the independent investigation of occurrence and appraisals of daily memory lapses provided insight into characteristics of the experience of memory problems that heighten or buffer affective reactivity (i.e., within-person fluctuations in daily affect) to daily memory lapses. This cross-sectional daily diary study investigated: 1) associations between daily memory lapses and daily negative and positive affective reactivity; 2) whether personality (neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness) influences relationships between daily memory lapses and daily affective reactivity; and 3) whether control beliefs about cognitive aging influence relationships between daily memory lapses and daily affective reactivity. In each aim, both the occurrence of daily memory lapses (i.e., whether or not a lapse occurred on a given day) and appraisals (i.e., to what extent lapses were viewed as irritating or interfering with daily routines) were examined as characteristics of memory lapses potentially associated with affective reactivity. This study used cross-sectional data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Refresher Study as well as data from the MIDUS Refresher Daily Diary Study (n=383; Mage=57.32; SD=8.19). Multilevel modeling was used to examine within-person relationships between occurrence and appraisals of daily memory lapses with daily negative and positive affective reactivity while accounting for between-person effects, as well as potential moderating effects of personality traits and control beliefs about cognitive aging on these relationships. The study also explored whether results depended upon age, as the MIDUS sample offers the opportunity to examine key study variables in both middle-aged and older adults. Results demonstrated that appraisals of daily memory lapses were more consistently related to affective reactivity than the occurrence of memory lapses on a given day. Appraising memory lapses as interferences with daily routines, compared to appraising them as irritations, was more consistently related to positive affective reactivity than negative affective reactivity. Higher levels of agreeableness and openness personality traits were related to buffered affective reactivity, most often to greater resilience in positive affective reactivity to daily memory lapses. Control beliefs about cognitive aging did not significantly impact relationships between characteristics of daily memory lapses and affective reactivity. Older adults higher in conscientiousness reported higher daily positive affect on non-memory lapse days and memory lapse days than middle-aged adults. Conscientiousness played more of a moderating role on the relationship between appraisals of daily memory lapses as irritations and positive affective reactivity in middle-aged adults compared to older adults. Similarly, level of agreeableness did not impact positive affect as much in older adults on lower vs. higher irritation appraisal days compared to middle-aged adults. In addition, higher vs. lower levels of control beliefs about cognitive aging did not impact positive affective reactivity as much for older adults compared to middle-aged adults. Overall, older adults showed less variability in affective reactivity to daily memory lapses than middle-aged adults across models demonstrating significant or marginally significant age differences. This study advances our understanding of characteristics of memory problems that impact affective symptoms and how certain individual characteristics (e.g., agreeableness and openness personality traits) may contribute to affective reactivity to daily memory lapses. These findings inform the preliminary identification of potential intervention pathways to address how characteristics of daily memory problems may adversely impact middle-aged and older adults’ short- and long-term physical and mental health. Surprisingly, while the neuroticism personality trait is fairly consistently associated with affective reactivity to daily stressors, this trait did not moderate affective reactivity to daily memory lapses in this sample. Collectively, these findings also inform the importance of assessment of consequences of subjective memory problems in daily life (e.g., appraisals of problems as irritations or interferences with daily routines) in both clinical and research settings as they relate to affective symptoms in middle-aged and older adults.