The impact of age and physical health on processing speed was investigated in 42 non-demented HIV+ individuals ranging in age from 30 to 75. We used the Medical Outcomes Study-HIV Healthy Survey (MOS-HIV) to measure self-reported physical health, neuropsychological tests to measure psychomotor and cognitive processing speed (Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Trail Making Test, Grooved Pegboard Test, letter and category fluency), and a test of the foreperiod effect to measure reaction time under increasing attentional load. Results indicated that aging and worse physical health each independently contributed to slowing on different processing speed measures, while the interaction between aging and physical health did not contribute to processing speed. These findings highlight the importance of considering physical health separately from age when measuring cognitive function in HIV+ adults.
Adult Aged