Depression, anxiety, and within-person variability in adults aged 18 to 85 years.

Abstract

Mild depression and anxiety were investigated in relation to measures of within-person (WP) variability and mean reaction time from psychomotor, executive function, visual search, and word recognition tasks in a continuous age range (18–85 years, M = 50.33, SD = 20.37) of 300 community-dwelling adults. Structural equation modeling identified a significant Age × Depression interaction in relation to visual search for measures of WP variability but not for mean reaction time. Older more depressed adults exhibited greater variability. WP variability in executive function and other cognitive constructs covaried, and the significant Age × Depression interaction with visual search was accounted for by WP variability in executive control. The findings suggest that age- and depression-related reductions in attentional resources may contribute to increased variability in visual search and that variability in executive control may be the mechanism underlying these effects.

Does within-person variability predict errors in healthy adults aged 18–90?

“…The cognitive tasks were embedded within a broader battery, details of which have been previously reported Bunce et al, 2008). Task and condition order were counterbalanced across participants.…”

“…We therefore reran the models controlling for episodic memory performance (measured using a word recognition memory task used in the original studies Bunce et al, 2008). This did not influence the reported results.…”

“…Data were drawn from two previously published studies Bunce, Handley, & Gaines, 2008) to form the current dataset of 557 communitydwelling participants (327 women) aged SD=17.20). There were 105 younger (18-39 years, 61% women), 249 middle-aged (40-64 years, 63% women), and 203 older adults (65-90 years, 77% women) in the combined sample.…”

Poorer mental health is associated with cognitive deficits in old age

“…Research suggests that poorer mental health has a deleterious influence on cognitive function in old age (e.g., Bunce, Handley, & Gaines, 2008a;Bunce, Tzur, Ramchurn, Gain, & Bond, 2008b;Elderkin-Thompson, Mintz, Haroon, Lavretsky, & Kumar, 2007;Sheline et al, 2006). This may arise because depression and anxiety are associated with a reduction in the ability to process information and attentional resources are directed toward intrusive depression or anxiety-related thoughts resulting in impaired cognitive function (Hartlage, Alloy, Vazquez, & Dykman, 1993).…”

“…We were particularly interested in within-person (WP) RT variability (trial-to-trial variation in RT performance) as the measure is thought to reflect fluctuations in executive function (Bunce, MacDonald, & Hultsch, 2004;R. West, Murphy, Armilio, Craik, & Stuss, 2002) and our previous work (Bunce et al, 2008a;Bunce et al, 2008b) suggests it is sensitive to the effects of mental health on age differences in cognition. More broadly, the measure is held to index neurobiological disturbance (Hultsch, Strauss, Hunter, & Age, mental health and cognition 4 MacDonald, 2008) and is predictive of a range of neurological disorders relating to age including mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia (Bielak, Hultsch, Strauss, Macdonald, & Hunter, 2010;Dixon et al, 2007;Hultsch, MacDonald, Hunter, LevyBencheton, & Strauss, 2000) Parkinson s disease (de Frias, Dixon, Fisher, & Camicioli, 2007) and, indeed, mortality (Batterham, Bunce, MacKinnon, & Christensen, in press;MacDonald, Hultsch, & Dixon, 2008).…”