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Musculoskeletal pain complaints and performance on cognitive tasks over the adult life span
Author(s) -
SÖDERFJELL STEFAN,
MOLANDER BO,
JOHANSSON HÅKAN,
BARNEKOWBERGKVIST MARGARETA,
NILSSON LARSGÖRAN
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2006.00540.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , depression (economics) , population , clinical psychology , effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance , memory span , working memory , psychiatry , medicine , environmental health , economics , macroeconomics
The present study aimed at comparing participants with and without self reported musculoskeletal pain in a normal population with regard to performance on a range of tests for episodic memory, semantic memory, and other cognitive functions and to see if expected differences interacted with age. The results showed that participants with pain performed worse on a range of tasks as compared to participants without pain, and that these differences occurred regardless of age. The most robust effects of pain were displayed on tests for vocabulary and construction ability as these were the only effects that remained significant after controlling for years of education and reported depression in separate analyses. When depression and education were controlled for in the same analysis, even these effects were eliminated, suggesting interplay between pain, depressive status, and educational level in the negative effects on cognitive functioning.