Two studies suggest that personality change may be an early indicator of dementia (Balsis et al, 2005; Smith-Gamble et al, 2001); however, these studies did not assess personality trait change. Although Yoneda et al (2015) prospectively examined personality traits, the nature of the analyses did not allow comparison between trajectories in normal and abnormal aging. The current study includes comparison of trajectories of extraversion and neuroticism personality traits in individuals who did and did not receive a dementia diagnosis.This study used data from the OCTO-Twin Study, Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, Swedish Adoption Twin Study of Aging, and Einstein Aging Study. For each dataset, a series of latent growth curve models were run examining each personality trait, first including a subsample of individuals eventually diagnosed with dementia and time-to-dementia metric, and second including the entire dataset, dementia diagnosis as a variable, and time-in-study metric.Controlling for sex, age, education, depressive symptoms, and the interaction between age and education, the first series of analyses revealed a consistent pattern of personality change preceding dementia diagnosis across datasets, specifically linear increases in neuroticism and stability in extraversion. The second series of analyses revealed a less stable pattern of results: dementia diagnosis was only a significant predictor of neuroticism trajectories in some datasets. These findings will be discussed.Identification of early indicators of dementia, specifically how personality changes differ for healthy individuals compared to individuals eventually diagnosed with dementia, may aid in early care strategies and facilitate development of screening assessments.
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