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The validity of memory complaints by elderly persons
Author(s) -
Christensen Helen
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
international journal of geriatric psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.28
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1099-1166
pISSN - 0885-6230
DOI - 10.1002/gps.930060507
Subject(s) - complaint , psychology , memory test , test (biology) , memory impairment , memory disorder , audiology , clinical psychology , psychiatry , cognitive disorder , cognition , medicine , cognitive impairment , paleontology , political science , law , biology
Memory complaint and objective test performance were assessed in 20 elderly ‘memory complainers’, 11 elderly controls, 14 young students, and 19 mildly‐to‐moderately demented patients using an everyday memory questionnaire and clinical memory tasks. Consistent with earlier studies, memory complainers as a group reported more failures of everyday memory but did not differ from the controls on the clinical memory tasks. However, on further analysis, memory complaint and poor test performance were positively associated; first, in those elderly subjects who considered their memory impairment to be both worse than their peers' and recently acquired; and secondly, in individuals whose level of memory performance was lower than that expected on the basis of their ‘premorbid intelligence’. The latter finding indicates that a legitimate basis for memory complaint is more often present in complainers than non‐complainers.