Information Recognition and Recall in Older Adults Bearing Vascular Risk Factors with or without Diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment

Episodic memory is affected early and is a basic indication of neurodegeneration especially for Alzheimer’s disease. The aim of this study was to examine whether adults with vascular risk factors are differentiated in their episodic memory performance from individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The episodic memory of adults diagnosed with MCI, adults with vascular risk factors (VRF; blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, or hypercholesterolemia), and healthy controls was assessed using the Doors and People test. Statistical processing included mediation analyses which were performed separately for the VRF and healthy control groups, and the MCI and healthy control groups. ANOVA was used for the MCI and VRF groups which were matched in age and education. ANOVA showed that the MCI adults had significantly lower performance than the VRF adults in verbal recall only, F (1, 83) = 9.541, p = 0.003, and ηp2 = 0.10. A direct effect of diagnosis on verbal recall was found via mediation analysis as concerns individuals with MCI and healthy controls, b = 0.506, SE = 0.128, p < 0.001, and 95%CI: 0.221–0.771, in favor of the healthy controls. Concerning the VRF and healthy groups, a tendency of diagnosis to directly affect verbal recall was shown (α = 0.005) in favor of the healthy controls, b = 0.388, SE = 0.150, p = 0.010, and 95%CI: 0.043–0.720. In conclusion, it is supported that patients with MCI present deficit performance in verbal recall; in addition, the diagnostic category affects all the groups’ performance on the same condition. These results indicated that the verbal recall aspect of episodic memory can be a sensitive indicator that can differentiate healthy adults from adults with mild cognitive impairment and vascular risk factors, as well as the two pathological groups from each other.