Subjective memory and strategy use in mild cognitive impairment and healthy aging

Limited information is available about subjective memory and strategy use in seniors with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We investigated whether differences exist in the perception of changes in memory, perceived frequency of forgetting, overall memory evaluation, and strategy use between seniors with MCI and unimpaired older adults. The study included 56 participants, aged 60 years and older, including 28 normal controls (NC) and 28 MCI patients. The participants completed the Short Cognitive Performance Test, the Story and Grocery list recall tasks, the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale, the Memory Complaint Questionnaire for the perception of changes in episodic memory, the McNair Frequency of Forgetting Questionnaire, and a single question that evaluated overall memory. The Bousfield semantic clustering measure was calculated to assess semantic clustering for list recall. The number of underlined words during story encoding was calculated to assess strategy use. Participants with MCI had significantly worse scores on Story and Grocery list recall, semantic clustering, and overall memory evaluation. No differences were found in the number of underlined words. List recall was significantly correlated with semantic clustering in both groups (NC: r = .58, p = .001; MCI: r = .57, p = .002). Participants with MCI appeared to be less efficacious when using memory strategies, which may be associated with poor memory performance.