Abrcms yesenia

ABSENCE OF RELATION OF PERCEIVED STRESS TO COGNITIVE FUNCTION IN OLDER ADULTS
Yesenia I. Torres Olmeda1, Megan M. Hosey, MA2, Leslie I. Katzel, MD PhD3, Shari R. Waldstein, PhD2,3.
1Dept.

ofPsychology, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR; 2Dept. of Psychology, University of Maryland, 3Dept. of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine Baltimore County,Baltimore, MD,USA. PO Box. 5294 San Sebastian, PR 00685
787 – 317 – 9349 yitorres@ipsi.uprrp.edu

INTRODUCTION
• Perceived stress is a construct that measures an individual’s perception of theirability to respond to environmental and/or psychosocial stressors. • Perceived stress has known deleterious effects on various dimensions of brain structure. • Biological measures of stress, such ascortisol, have also been associated negatively with brain structure and with cognitive function. • However, very few studies have examined the relationship of perceived stress to cognitive function.RESULTS
Procedure • A battery of neuropsychological tests was administered. The tests measured the following domains: • Executive Function Trail Making Test B Digit Span Backward Stroop-Color-Word Test •Memory Logical Memory - (Immediate and Delayed) Visual Reproductions - (Immediate and Delayed) • Attention Digit Span Forward
• Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that perceived stress wasnot significantly correlated with any measure of cognitive function adjustment variables: (age, sex, education, race and systolic blood pressure). • Multiple regression analyses showed no genderdifferences between perceived stress and cognitive function.

CONCLUSIONS
• Our findings suggest that ratings of perceived stress do not relate to memory and executive function.

OBJECTIVE
• Thepurpose of this study is to examine whether a selfreport measure of perceived stress is related to cognitive domains, specifically, memory and executive function.

• Although psychological self-report...