Regular Research ArticleEffects of Anxiety Versus Depression on Cognition in Later Life
Section snippets
Sample
To investigate the association between anxiety and cognition in older persons, we used data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA18). LASA is a longitudinal study of predictors and consequences of changes in well-being and autonomy in older persons. Details on sampling are described elsewhere19., 20., 21. and will briefly be summarized here. The sample was originally drawn for NESTOR-Living Arrangements and Social Network (NESTOR–LSN;22), for which random samples of older residents
RESULTS
Table 1 shows the characteristics of these elderly respondents, divided in four groups: 1) with neither anxiety nor depression symptoms (ANX−/DEP−); 2) with anxiety but no depression symptoms (ANX+/DEP−); 3) with no anxiety but only depression symptoms (ANX−/DEP+); and 4) with both anxiety and depressive symptoms (ANX+/DEP+).
Analysis of variance shows significant main effects of anxiety symptoms on Learning and Delayed Recall of the AVLT. Depression symptoms show significant effects on all
DISCUSSION
The present study sought to investigate whether anxiety and depression have different effects on cognition in a large sample of community-living elderly persons. We found that mild anxiety symptoms seem to be beneficial, whereas severe anxiety negatively influences cognitive performance. Depression symptoms always negatively influence cognitive functioning. The association between anxiety symptoms and cognitive performance seems to be a curvilinear relationship. These findings support the
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