UNIQUE AND INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF DEPRESSION, AGE, SOCIOECONOMIC ADVANTAGE, AND GENDER ON COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE OF NORMAL HEALTHY OLDER-PEOPLE

A sample of 4,243 residents of Manchester, England and Newcastle-upon- Tyne, England, aged 50 to 93 years, completed the Beck Depression Scal e (A. T. Beck, C. H. Ward, M. Mendelson, J. Mock, & J. Erbaugh, 1961) and a battery of 6 different cognitive tests. Beck scores were low, in dicating gradations of dysphoria rather than clinical depression. Beck scores did not vary with age but were significantly higher for women than for men and for disadvantaged than for advantaged socioeconomic g roups. Measures of fluid, but not of crystallized, ability declined as age increased. Socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with poorer performance on all cognitive tests. Men scored higher on a test of spa tial reasoning, and women scored higher on a test of word definition a nd on 2 tests of verbal memory and learning. However, after variance a ssociated with all these demographic and individual difference variabl es was considered, and within a range indicative of dysphoria rather t han clinical depression, higher Beck scores were associated with signi ficantly poorer performance on both crystallized and fluid measures of cognitive ability. This association was less marked in women than in men, but age, socioeconomic advantage, and estimated lifetime intellec tual ability did not act as protective or risk factors for vulnerabili ty of cognitive processes to dysphoria.