Lower visual processing speed relates to greater subjective cognitive complaints in community-dwelling healthy older adults

Marrero-Polegre, Daniela; Finke, Kathrin ; Roaschio, Naomi; Haupt, Marleen ; Reyes-Moreno, Cristian and Ruiz-Rizzo, Adriana L. (21. March 2023): Lower visual processing speed relates to greater subjective cognitive complaints in community-dwelling healthy older adults. In: Frontiers in Psychiatry, Vol. 14: 01-10

Abstract

Introduction: Subjective cognitive complaints in older age may reflect subtle objective impairments in basic cognitive functions that might foreshadow broader cognitive problems. Such cognitive functions, however, are not captured by standard neuropsychological testing. Visual processing speed is a basic visual attention function that underlies the performance of cognitive tasks relying on visual stimuli. Here, we test the hypothesis that lower visual processing speed correlates with greater subjective cognitive complaints in healthy older adults from the community. Methods: To do so, we assessed a sample of 30 healthy, cognitively normal older adults (73.07 ± 7.73 years old; range: 60–82; 15 females) with respect to individual subjective cognitive complaints and visual processing speed. We quantified the degree of subjective cognitive complaints with two widely-used questionnaires: the Memory Functioning Questionnaire and the Everyday Cognition. We used verbal report tasks and the theory of visual attention to estimate a visual processing speed parameter independently from motor speed and other visual attention parameters, i.e., visual threshold, visual short-term memory storage capacity, top-down control, and spatial weighting. Results: We found that lower visual processing speed correlated with greater subjective complaints and that this relationship was not explained by age, education, or depressive symptoms. The association with subjective cognitive complaints was specific to visual processing speed, as it was not observed for other visual attention parameters. Discussion: These results indicate that subjective cognitive complaints reflect a reduction in visual processing speed in healthy older adults. Together, our results suggest that the combined assessment of subjective cognitive complaints and visual processing speed has the potential to identify individuals at risk for cognitive impairment before the standard tests show any abnormal results.

• Item Type: Journal article
• EU Funded Grant Agreement Number: 754388
• EU Projects: Horizon 2020 > Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions > Marie Skłodowska-Curie: Other programs > 754388: The LMU Research Fellowship Program: Promoting excellent early-stage postdoctoral researchers at LMU Munich
• Form of publication: Publisher's Version
• Keywords: aging, memory complaints, subjective function, subjective cognitive decline, visual attention, visual processing speed
• Faculties: Psychology and Education Science > Department Psychology > General and Experimental Psychology
• Subjects: 100 Philosophy and Psychology > 150 Psychology; 500 Science > 500 Science
• ISSN: 1664-0640
• Language: English