THE INFLUENCE OF SELF-PERCEPTIONS OF AGING ON COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING IN OLDER ADULT DYADS

Older adults who report negative self-perceptions of aging (SPA) perform worse on memory
tests and perceive their memory abilities to be worse than their counterparts who report positive
SPA. Research suggests that romantic partners influence one another’s experience and appraisal
of aging. Thus, this study examined whether individuals’ SPA impacted their own and their
partner’s memory longitudinally. Using three waves of data from the Health and Retirement
Study (HRS), we conducted actor-partner interdependence models with 933 married or
cohabiting couples aged 50 to 88 to determine whether positive and negative dimensions of SPA
influenced change in episodic memory (i.e., immediate and delayed recall) and self-rated
memory over eight years. Partners’ SPA were positively correlated at baseline (positive = .393, p
< .001; negative = .441, p < .001), however, we did not find evidence that SPA was associated
with change in episodic or self-rated memory in either the actor or the partner. These findings
indicate that individuals’ SPA is related to their partners’, but researchers should continue to
investigate the degree to which social influences of SPA impact cognitive functioning in older
adulthood.