Associations between Attitudes to Aging with concurrent and twelve-year change in cognitive functioning in very old individuals.

Objectives: This study investigated the cross-sectional associations between participants' scores on five cognitive domains and global cognition and their scores on a multidimensional measure of self-perceptions of aging. This study also investigated whether 12-year change in the same cognitive domains and global cognition was associated with self-perceptions of aging.
Design: Cross-sectional and longitudinal secondary analyses of a cohort study.
Participants: Participants were 103 individuals (mean age at 12-year follow-up = 87.43 years; SD = 3.60; 60.2 % women) enrolled in the Sydney Memory and Aging Study (MAS) with 12-years of follow-up data.
Measurements: Cognitive domains assessed over 7 waves were attention processing speed, language, executive function, visuospatial abilities, and memory. Self-perceptions of aging were assessed only at wave 7 using the three subscales of the Laidlaw' Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire: psychological growth, psychosocial loss, and (positive) physical change.
Results: After having adjusted for age, sex, marital status, occupation when working, depressive symptoms, and numbers of physical health conditions and for multiple comparisons there were no significant cross-sectional associations between cognitive abilities and global cognition and the subscales of the Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire. After having adjusted for baseline cognition, age, sex, marital status, occupation when working, depressive symptoms, and numbers of physical health conditions there were no significant longitudinal associations between change in cognitive abilities and in general cognition and the subscales of the Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire.
Conclusions: Cross-sectional and change scores on cognitive tasks and global cognition do not have an effect on Attitudes to Aging after having controlled for depressive symptoms.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: PSS was member of expert advisory panels for Biogen and Roche in 2020–2022. PSS is supported by funding from the NHMRC (APP1169489) and the National Institutes of Health, USA; grant 2R01AG057531-02A1. Henry Brodaty is or has been an advisory board member or consultant to Biogen, Eisai, Eli Lilly, Medicines Australia, Roche and Skin2Neuron. He is a Medical Advisory Board member for Cranbrook Care.
(Copyright © 2025. Published by Elsevier Inc.)