Evaluation of Episodic and Lexical Metamemory and Executive Function in Healthy Older Adults

Abstract In older adults, it is important to maintain awareness of memory as well as memory performance. However, it is not clear whether the awareness of episodic and lexical memory changes with age and is related to self-evaluation of memory and executive function. Here age-related changes and the relationship between metamemory, executive function, and metamemory scale were investigated. Healthy old (n=40) and young (n=34) groups participated in this study. In the episodic memory task, participants were asked to memorize ten Kanji words and to estimate the number of words they could recall after ten minutes. In the lexical memory task, they rated the likelihood that they could write a target Kanji word written in hiragana and then wrote them down. They were also asked to complete the metamemory in adulthood(MIA) and the position stroop task. In the episodic and lexical memory and the position stroop task and MIA subscales, the performances of the younger group were significantly better than those of the older group. In the episodic memory task, there were correlations between the metamemory and MIA subscales in both groups, but in the lexical memory task, only in the old group. No correlation was found between the results of both memory tasks and the stroop test. These results suggest that older people overestimate memory performances in the episodic and lexical memory tasks and metamemory performances may be associated with self-evaluation of memory. In addition, metamemory might not be related to frontal lobe function as shown in executive function tasks.


DOES HBA1C INFLUENCE THE RELATIONSHIP BE-TWEEN STRESS AND COGNITION? FINDINGS FROM THE VA NORMATIVE AGING STUDY
Austin Brockmann, 1 Carolyn Aldwin, 1 and Avron Spiro, 2 , 1. Oregon State University,Corvallis,Oregon,United States,2. Boston University,Boston,Massachusetts,United States Type 2 diabetes has increased in prevalence globally, with potential adverse effects on cognition.Both high levels of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and stressful life events (SLEs) are associated with impaired cognitive performance, but few studies have examined their synergistic effects.The present study examined direct effects of stress and HbA1c on several cognitive outcomes, and whether HbA1c moderated the relationship between SLEs and cognition.Utilizing a sample of 527 older men from the VA Normative Aging Study (Mage = 74.3,SD = 6.5), stress was inversely related to MMSE, verbal fluency, and pattern recognition; HbA1c was only inversely associated with MMSE.The moderation model was supported only for pattern recognition ( = 1.64, p < .05),with stress having worse effects in those high in HbA1c.Stratifying analyses by age group (<75, 75+) showed that stress predicted cognition only in the young-old, while HbA1c was inversely related to cognition only in old-old participants.Further, these age-group analyses yielded different effects of demographics on cognition.In the young-old, age was consistently inversely related to all cognitive outcomes, but in the old-old only with MMSE and word list recall.Among the young-old, education was associated with only word list recall but improved performance for most scales among the old-old.Finally, HbA1c intensified the effect of stress moderation on verbal fluency only in old-old ( = 2.78, p < .05).In summary, stress was more important for cognition in the young-old, while education and health status were more important in the old-old.

EFFECTS OF AGE AND SELF-PERFORMANCE ON MEMORY FOR THE ACTIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE
Alan Kersten, 1 Julie Earles, 2 and Jennifer Brymer, 2 , 1.Florida Atlantic University,Boca Raton,Florida,United States,2. Florida Atlantic University,Jupiter,Florida,United States This research tested whether performing an action themselves leads young and older adults to have difficulty remembering which of a number of other people had performed that same action.It also tested whether observing another person perform an action leads to false memory for self-performance of that action.Young adults and healthy older adults 62 to 88 years of age viewed videos of actors performing actions.After viewing some of the actions, participants were instructed to perform those same actions themselves.Participants were tested one week later on their memory for their own actions and for the actions of the actors in the videos.Older adults were more strongly influenced by self-performance than were young adults when asked whether the actor in a test item had performed the same action previously.Young adults performed better than older adults at discriminating the correct and incorrect actors in the videos, although both groups showed reduced discrimination for actions that they had also performed themselves.The two groups were equally likely to falsely remember having performed an action that had only appeared in the videos, but young adults were better able than older adults to correctly identify the actions that they had in fact performed.Older adults thus have greater difficulty than young adults at distinguishing self-performed actions from actions performed by other people.This suggests the existence of common representations for the actions of oneself and others that must be bound to identity information to specify the correct source of the actions.

EVALUATION OF EPISODIC AND LEXICAL METAMEMORY AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IN HEALTHY OLDER ADULTS Atsuko Hayashi, Kobe University, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan
In older adults, it is important to maintain awareness of memory as well as memory performance.However, it is not clear whether the awareness of episodic and lexical memory changes with age and is related to self-evaluation of memory and executive function.Here age-related changes and the relationship between metamemory, executive function, and metamemory scale were investigated.Healthy old (n=40) and young (n=34) groups participated in this study.In the episodic memory task, participants were asked to memorize ten Kanji words and to estimate the number of words they could recall after ten minutes.In the lexical memory task, they rated the likelihood that they could write a target Kanji word written in hiragana and then wrote them down.They were also asked to complete the metamemory in adulthood(MIA) and the position stroop task.In the episodic and lexical memory and the position stroop task and MIA subscales, the performances of the younger group were significantly better than those of the older group.In the episodic memory task, there were correlations between the metamemory and MIA subscales in both groups, but in the lexical memory task, only in the old group.No correlation was found between the results of both memory tasks and the stroop test.These results suggest that older people overestimate memory performances in the episodic and lexical memory tasks and metamemory performances may be associated with self-evaluation of memory.In addition, metamemory might not be related to frontal lobe function as shown in executive function tasks.and .44 [.40-.48] for identical (MZ) twins, suggesting possible heritable influences.Poorer PS performance was associated with higher frailty, but was significant for DS only (B: DS = -0.43,p =.005).Furthermore, the DS-frailty association was magnified by age (B: DSxAge = -0.06,p =.025), suggesting that the associations between processing speed and frailty may increase with age.These findings help elucidate the interrelationship between indicators of frailty and cognitive performance for adults approaching midlife, a salient and understudied period within lifespan development.

HIGH COGNITIVE LOAD SITUATIONS WITH DIFFERENT CONVERSATION TOPICS AFFECT WALKING SPEED AND COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY
Hyeon Jung Kim, 1 Julie Blaskewicz Boron, 1 Jennifer Yentes, 2 and Dawn Venema, 3 , 1. University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, United States, 2. University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Nebraska, United States, 3. University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, United States Walking and talking on the phone are common highcognitive-load-situations (HCLS; e.g.dual-tasks), requiring extra attentional allocation and increasing perceived stress.We explored whether two load types, 1) single-task (ST) walking or talking on a phone and 2) HCLS walking while talking on a phone, influenced walking and/or cognitive performance among young (n=7; age=23.00±2.08yrs),middle-aged (n=14; age=44.79±7.42yrs),and older (n=15; age=74.47±3.91yrs)adults while controlling for perceived stress.Participants completed 3-minute trials of singletask walking (ST-W), single-task phone conversations with common (e.g., weather; ST-C) and uncommon topics (e.g., life experience; ST-U), and walking while talking on a phone (HCLS-C and HCLS-U).Walking speed was analyzed with 3(ST-W;HCLS-C;HCLS-U) x 3(Age) ANCOVA.HCLS resulted in slower walking speed (p<.001).Older adults exhibited slower speed across conditions compared to young (p=.015).Cognitive complexity (i.e., conversational tone and words greater than six letters (SIXLTR)) on the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) were analyzed with 2(Cvs.U) x 2(STvs.HCLS) x 3(Age) ANCOVAs.Older age was associated with less cognitive complexity; positive tone (p=.014) and SIXLTR (p=.016), respectively in conversations.Uncommon topics reduced positive tone (p=.022) and SIXLTR (p=.003).Effects of HCLS on tone (p=.040) and SIXLTR (p=.005) varied with age.HCLS with different conversation topics resulted in reduced walking and cognitive complexity while controlling for perceived stress.The analysis of cognitive complexity using common/uncommon conversation topics is a novel method to assess the impact of HCLS.This research will disrupt the transformation of aging leading to a better understanding of attentional allocation and its effects on function.

INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF AGE AND INFLAMMA-TION ON CHANGE IN ECOLOGICALLY-ASSESSED COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING
Christopher Engeland, 1 Erik Knight, 2 Martin Sliwinski, 3 and Jennifer Graham-Engeland, Inflammation has been implicated as a precursor to steeper declines in age-associated cognitive decline.Here we investigated biomarkers of peripheral inflammation [basal cytokines, stimulated cytokines (ex vivo), C-reactive protein (CRP)] as moderators of age-related changes in cognitive functioning.As part of the Effects of Stress on Cognitive Aging, Physiology, and Emotion (ESCAPE) study, participants (N = 233; 65% female; 63% Black, 25% Hispanic; 25-65 years of age) completed up to four instances of ambulatory cognitive testing per day across two weeks, over three waves of annual assessments.After each 2-week ecological momentary assessment (EMA) burst, blood was collected and assayed for inflammatory biomarkers.Performance on spatial working memory (mean Euclidean distance errors), 1 , 1. Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States, 2. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States, 3. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States