Accuracy of subjective cognitive complaints in a longitudinal context: The effect of depression and dementia status

The purpose of this study was to determine whether subjective complaints about change in memory, attention, and language accurately reflect past decline or predict future cognitive decline on neuropsychological tests in older adults with normal cognition or with Alzheimer's disease. Further, the effect of dementia status and depressive symptoms on these relationships was assessed. Using the USC Alzheimer's Disease Research Center longitudinal dataset, subjective cognitive complaints, cognitive performance, and depressive symptoms were assessed in 132 participants. Overall, neither diagnostic group's complaints accurately reflected past decline for any cognitive domain. Rather, depressive symptoms predicted endorsement of complaints for all domains. In addition, dementia status moderated the effect of depression on future memory decline. Finally, language complaints predicted future language decline in the entire sample, but similar relationships were not present for attention and memory. Implications of these findings are discussed.