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Updated: Mar 30, 2026

Human Circadian Phenotyping and Diurnal Performance Testing in the Real World
Published on: April 7, 2020
Daily Fluctuations in Everyday Cognition: Is It Meaningful?
Alyssa A Gamaldo1, Jason C Allaire2
1University of South Florida, Tampa, USA agamaldo@usf.edu.
Objective:
This study examined whether there are daily fluctuations in everyday cognition that are consistent with daily fluctuations often observed in traditional measures of basic cognitive abilities.
Method:
Two hundred six independently living older adults (age range = 60-91 years) were asked to complete a computerized cognitive battery over eight occasions within a 2- to 3-week period.
Results:
Using multilevel model, significant within-person variability was observed across the Daily Everyday Cognition Assessment (DECA; 46%), with 54% between-person variability. At each occasion, better performance on the DECA was significantly associated with better performance on simple reaction time ( p < .01) and memory (Auditory Verbal Learning Task, p < .01) even after accounting for time, age, education, and performance on other cognitive measures.
Conclusion:
These findings demonstrate that within-person performance fluctuations can be observed for everyday cognition tasks, and these fluctuations are consistent with daily changes in basic cognitive abilities.
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