LE3 .A278 2019

2019

Jones, Stephanie
Bazinet, Patrick

Acadia University

Master of Science

Masters

Clinical Psychology

Psychology

There are both benefits and negative consequences of detecting a progressive memory illness, such as Alzheimer’s Disease. As such, the current study indented to examine the experience of participating in a community-based memory clinic. Aims were to: 1) confirm the frequency of dementia worry ; 2) determine the relationship between anxiety levels and participating in the memory clinic; 3) determine whether subjective memory functioning predicted levels of anxiety and dementia worry prior to memory testing; 4) confirm the relationship among subjective memory functioning, anxiety, dementia worry, and actual memory performance, and;5) confirm whether levels of dementia worry had an impact on participants’ inclinations to pursue lifestyle behaviour changes associated with healthy memory aging. Memory clinic participants (N= 88) completed self-report measures assessing: perceptions of memory ability, dementia worry, state anxiety, and lifestyle behaviours associated with healthy cognitive ageing. A frequency analysis determined that 20% of participants held moderate to high levels of dementia worry prior to memory testing. Variance analyses revealed that anxiety scores were lower in participants after memory testing, but only for those who held high anxiety scores prior to memory testing. Results suggested those with poor self-perceptions of memory ability tended to report higher levels of anxiety if they fell within the “possibly impaired range” of memory performance. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed that poor self-perceptions of memory ability predicted higher levels of state anxiety and dementia worry prior to memory testing. Lastly, logistic regression results did not support the hypothesis that poor subjective memory ability, high dementia worry, and state anxiety would predict a greater likelihood of exhibiting poor memory performance.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:3343