Browsing by Author "Salo, Micaela"

Subjective memory complaints (SMC) are common among the elderly. People experiencing SMC have been shown to be at a greater risk of suffering cognitive decline and potentially developing dementia. Studies have shown that SMC is associated with poorer performance in e.g. perceptual reasoning -tasks and tasks of delayed memory. This Masters' thesis aims to study the prevalence of SMC in a sample of healthy Finnish adults aged 50 to 80 years, and the association between SMC and other than directly memory related cognitive performance on the WAIS-IV -test. Based on earlier research, we hypothesized that individuals who reported SMC would perform worse on WAIS-IV perceptual reasoning subtests and verbal comprehension subtest related to memory retrieval. The data consisted of a subsample of healthy 50-80 year old adults in the Finnish WAIS-IV standardization sample. Twenty-five adults reported SMC (10.2 %). The control group consisted of 220 persons from the same sample without memory complaints. We used regression analysis to study the association between SMC and WAIS-IV indexes and profile analysis to study the association between SMC and individual subtests. The results did not support the hypothesis. People reporting SMC performed significantly better at Matrix Reasoning, a subtest belonging to the Perceptual Reasoning Index (PRI). No differences in performance were found between the SMC-group and the control group in any of the verbal comprehension subtests or any other WAIS-IV subtests. This is the first study in Finland that examines SMC by using the WAIS-test. Not even in the English literature has the SMC previously been reportedly studied in such a comprehensive manner regarding other than directly memory related cognitive performance. The results indicate, that SMC reported in this study corresponds to the current definition of SMC: people experienced a decline in memory, but the study did not reveal objective cognitive impairment. The challenge for future research is further detailing the SMC neuropsychological profile regarding other than memory related cognitive performance, as well as recognising the need for longitudinal research of the middle-aged and older Finnish population.