Relationship between personality, memory complaints and episodic memory in young, middle-aged and older adults.

Age effects were found only on objective measures of episodic memory, not on subjective memory complaints.

• Cross-sectional design compared three groups: young, middle-aged, and older adults.
• Multimodal assessment of episodic memory was used to capture objective performance.
• No significant age effect was observed on subjective memory complaint measures.
• Objective memory performance differed significantly across the three age groups.

In young adults, memory complaints were consistent with actual memory performance.

• Memory complaints in young adults correlated with objective episodic memory scores.
• This suggests that in young adults, subjective memory perception accurately reflects objective performance.
• Personality traits (openness and neuroticism) were not reported as primary drivers of complaints in this group.

In middle-aged adults, memory complaints were more strongly associated with neuroticism than with actual memory performance.

• Higher levels of neuroticism were associated with higher memory complaints in middle-aged adults.
• This suggests that in middle age, subjective memory complaints may reflect emotional or personality factors rather than true memory decline.
• The relationship between complaints and objective performance was less prominent than the neuroticism-complaint link in this group.

In middle-aged adults, higher openness to experience was associated with better memory performance and lower memory complaints.

• Higher openness was linked to better objective episodic memory performance among middle-aged adults.
• Higher openness was also associated with fewer memory complaints in this age group.
• This contrasts with the neuroticism effect, which was associated with worse subjective outcomes.

In older adults, high openness was associated with better memory performance, while high neuroticism was linked to a greater number of errors.

• Openness to experience was positively associated with objective episodic memory performance in older adults.
• High neuroticism was associated with more memory errors in older adults.
• Memory complaints in older adults were not linked to either objective performance or personality traits.
• This dissociation suggests that in older adults, complaint levels may be influenced by other factors not captured by performance or personality measures.

The relationship between episodic memory, memory complaints, and personality is dynamic and changes across the adult lifespan.

• The pattern of associations among memory performance, complaints, and personality differed across young, middle-aged, and older adult groups.
• The authors interpret these findings as supporting the use of multimodal paradigms to investigate cognitive aging.
• Results highlight that memory complaints cannot be uniformly interpreted across age groups without accounting for personality.