Age moderates within-person associations between momentary affect and cognitive performance in daily life

This paper examined how momentary negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) are linked to ambulatory cognitive performance and whether these associations vary by age. Although prior research has identified between-person associations linking affect and cognitive performance, few ecological momentary assessment studies have investigated within-person relationships across adulthood.

Data were drawn from the Effects of Stress on Cognitive Aging, Physiology, and Emotion (ESCAPE) study. Participants were 260 racially and economically diverse adults aged 25-65 (Mage = 46.5) who completed five daily assessments over 14 days. At each assessment, participants reported their current affect and completed brief, standardized cognitive tasks via smartphone. Multilevel models examined within-person associations between NA, PA and ambulatory cognitive performance (processing speed, working memory, spatial memory) and tested age as a moderator.

Across all ages, moments of heightened NA (compared to individuals' averages) were related to worse working memory (γ_NA = -0.0004, SE = 0.0002, p = .02). Moments of heightened NA were related to decreases in processing speed (γ_NA = -0.0001, SE = 0.0000, p = .02) but only among adults around the sample mean age (46 years) and older. In contrast, moments of heightened PA were associated with decreases in working memory (γ_PA = -0.0003, SE = 0.0002, p = .04) only among adults under the sample mean age. No significant associations were observed between momentary affect and spatial memory.

These results indicate that within-person associations between affect and cognition in daily life vary as a function of age-related contextual and behavioral factors. These findings suggest potential clinical implications for cognition, particularly during periods of elevated NA in later midlife.