Journal of Aging and Health, Ahead of Print.
ObjectivesTo investigate how indicators of psychological stress and physical health differentially influence subjective and objective memory in older adults. Methods: 404 adults aged ≥55 without cognitive impairment participated in remote assessment of physical health (PHY; multimorbidity, body-mass-index), psychological distress (PDS; perceived stress, anxiety, depression), subjective memory complaints (SM), and task-based objective memory performance (OM). Results: Separately, both PHY and PDS significantly predicted SM (p < 0.01), but only PHY was associated with OM (p = 0.05). Combined models showed that PHY and PDS maintained significant association with SM (p < 0.01, R2 = 0.30), while only PHY was associated with OM (p = .07, R2 = 0.03; for associative OM, p = 0.04). Discussion: SM is associated with participants’ psychological profile, highlighting the importance of addressing these factors when assessing SM. The results also reveal that remotely-administered OM tasks are more immune to participants’ psychological profile, and support previously-established links between physical health and objective and subjective memory function.