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Mood and cognition in healthy older European adults: the Zenith study

Yes / Background: The study aim was to determine if state and trait intra-individual measures of everyday affect predict
cognitive functioning in healthy older community dwelling European adults (n = 387), aged 55-87 years.
Methods: Participants were recruited from centres in France, Italy and Northern Ireland. Trait level and variability in
positive and negative affect (PA and NA) were assessed using self-administered PANAS scales, four times a day for
four days. State mood was assessed by one PANAS scale prior to assessment of recognition memory, spatial working
memory, reaction time and sustained attention using the CANTAB computerized test battery.
Results: A series of hierarchical regression analyses were carried out, one for each measure of cognitive function as the
dependent variable, and socio-demographic variables (age, sex and social class), state and trait mood measures as the
predictors. State PA and NA were both predictive of spatial working memory prior to looking at the contribution of trait
mood. Trait PA and its variability were predictive of sustained attention. In the final step of the regression analyses, trait
PA variability predicted greater sustained attention, whereas state NA predicted fewer spatial working memory errors,
accounting for a very small percentage of the variance (1-2%) in the respective tests.
Conclusion: Moods, by and large, have a small transient effect on cognition in this older sample.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/12000
Date02 May 2014
CreatorsSimpson, E.E.A., Maylor, E.A., McConville, C., Stewart-Knox, Barbara, Meunier, N., Andriollo-Sanchez, M., Polito, A., Intorre, F., McCormack, J.M., Coudray, C.
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle, Published version
Rights© Simpson et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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