SELF-REPORTED PHYSICAL-ACTIVITY, SUBJECTIVE HEALTH, AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE IN OLDER ADULTS

The literature to date suggests a positive relationship between physio logical indicators of physical fitness (such as aerobic capacity) and indices of cognitive performance. However, the complexity and cost of methods to measure physical fitness prohibit their use in large-popula tion studies in cognitive aging research. in this study, a questionnai re measuring habitual physical activity was used as an indirect estima te of physical fitness, to predict performance in several cognitive do mains in art age- and sex-stratified sample of 80 healthy older adults (55 years and older). Age effects were found on several measures of c ognitive speed and fluency, but not on memory performance. Women were slower in sensorimotor speed than men but scored higher on memory task s. No main effects of activity on cognitive measures were found, but t wo measures that assessed cognitive speed were sensitive to the age-by -activity interaction term. Subjective health also appeared to contrib ute to the explained variance in the same two indices of cognitive spe ed. Limitations of the use of activity questionnaires in cognitive agi ng research are discussed.