Relationships between cognition and daily functioning in older adults: How much overlap is there?

Objective measures of cognition are commonly considered in diagnoses, whereas objective measures of daily functioning are not. As such, the current study sought to predict an objective measure of daily functioning from current cognitive test scores.

In 215 older adults (age: M = 74.86, SD = 5.68; education: M = 16.92, SD = 1.99; 66.50% female), of whom 87.90% were cognitively unimpaired and 12.10% were amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment, the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) and the Independent Living Scales (ILS) were administered. Stepwise regression models examined if demographics, RBANS scores, and cognitive status could predict ILS Full Scale scores.

In an initial step, demographics significantly predicted ILS Full Scale score (R2 = 0.11), with RBANS Total Scale score (∆R2 = 0.15) improving the prediction. Within the RBANS, the Immediate Memory (∆R2 = 0.15) and Attention (∆R2 = 0.02) Indexes were the best predictors of the ILS Full Scale score. At the subtest level, Story Memory (∆R2 = 0.15), Coding (∆R2 = 0.05), and List Learning (∆R2 = 0.02) significantly predicted overall performance on the ILS.

Multiple scores on the RBANS significantly predicted ILS Full Scale score, including those tapping immediate memory and attention. Despite these associations, a sizeable amount of variance of daily functioning was not captured with demographics and cognition, indicating that additional variables need to be considered in such models. Nonetheless, the current findings provide clinicians with additional information about predicting daily functioning based on cognitive test performance and demographic information.