Abstract
Evidence suggests that cognitive self-report is a potentially valuable indicator of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. However, subjective cognition is also associated with affective symptoms and certain personality traits, which can confound its utility as a predictor of cognitive decline. Furthermore, current measures of subjective cognition are highly variable across studies and tap into a variety of different constructs. The purpose of this symposium is to present findings from multiple studies that examined aspects of subjective cognition, its association with psychological well-being, the influence of individual characteristics (i.e., personality and sex) on cognitive self-report, and sources of response bias in current approaches to assessment. First, we present the results of a daily diary study that examined the influence of memory lapses on positive and negative affect. Second, we describe the temporal associations between memory self-report and depressive symptoms over an 18 year period. Our third presentation examines the influence of neuroticism on memory self-report in women specifically. Fourth, we present the results of a study that investigated the influence of temperament and personality on subjective executive function among older adults. And finally, we discuss sources of response bias in subjective cognition measures with a report on interviews conducted with older adults to elucidate their interpretations of, and responses to, common cognitive self-report items.