Trends in body mass index and obesity prevalence in Western Australian adults, 2002 to 2015.

ISSUE ADDRESSED: Continued increases in overweight and obesity across most parts of the world in recent decades have seen maintaining or reaching a healthy weight become a major public health priority. This study reports on body mass index (BMI) and obesity prevalence trends in Western Australian adults between 2002 and 2015. METHODS: Self-reported height and weight were collected from Western Australian adults (16+ years) via 81 867 computer-assisted telephone interviews conducted between 2002 and 2015 as part of the WA Health and Wellbeing Surveillance System. Linear and quadratic trends in annual mean BMI and obesity prevalence estimates were generated from self-report data. These trends were subject to sequential sum of squares analysis to examine whether annual increases in mean BMI and obesity prevalence estimates diminished or were maintained over the 2002 to 2015 period. RESULTS: The analyses showed a preference for a quadratic model (with plots suggesting diminishing increases between 2002 and 2015) in mean BMI for males, 25- to 64-year-olds and across all adults, and in obesity prevalence estimates across all adults. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest the rate at which mean BMI and obesity prevalence are increasing may be slowing overall and within specific groups in WA. SO WHAT?: The findings are potentially a positive news story for health in Western Australia. Even so, 2-thirds of the population are overweight or obese and there remains a strong need for sustained obesity prevention action.

Parents' perception of their child's weight status and intention to intervene: a Western Australian cross-sectional population survey, 2009-12.

OBJECTIVE: To report on parents' perceptions of their child's weight status and how the child's body mass index (BMI) is associated with parent intentions to change or maintain the child's weight. METHODS: Estimates were derived via data collected from 4,437 parents from 2009 to 2012 as part of the Western Australian Health and Wellbeing Surveillance System. To measure weight perceptions, parents were asked, "Is your child underweight, normal weight, overweight or very overweight?" BMI values were also derived via parent-reported height and weight. Parent intentions were assessed by asking parents, "What are your intentions regarding your child's weight?" RESULTS: Significantly fewer parents perceived their child as overweight (8.2%) or very overweight (0.2%) than was derived via parent-reported height and weight (16.3% and 5.8%, respectively). More than half the parents with children above or below the healthy BMI range reported an intention to "do nothing" about their child's weight (between 54.5% and 70.0%). CONCLUSIONS: A large proportion of Western Australian parents misjudge their child's weight status and the majority express no intention to help their child achieve a healthy weight. IMPLICATIONS: The results reinforce the importance of population-level, parent-focussed interventions targeting perceptions of children's weight and appropriate action.

The Interdependence of Long- and Short-Term Components in Unmasked Repetition Priming: An Indication of Shared Resources.

It has been suggested that unmasked repetition priming is composed of distinct long-and short-term priming components. The current study sought to clarify the relationship between these components by examining the relationship between them. A total of 60 people (45 females, 15 males) participated in a computer-based lexical decision task designed to measure levels of short-term priming across different levels of long-term priming. The results revealed an interdependent relationship between the two components, whereby an increase in long-term priming prompted a decrease in short-term priming. Both long-term and short-term priming were accurately captured by a single power function over seven minutes post repetition, suggesting the two components may draw on the same resources. This interdependence between long- and short-term priming may serve to improve fluency in reading.

Neuroticism (not depressive symptoms) predicts memory complaints in some community-dwelling older adults.

OBJECTIVES: To examine whether depressive symptoms are useful predictors of subjective memory complaints in community-dwelling older adults, beyond the predictive utility already provided by memory performance and characteristics of personality. DESIGN: Using hierarchical regression, we examined the relationship between depressive symptoms and subjective memory complaints, controlling for age, gender, education, memory performance, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. PARTICIPANTS: Community-dwelling older adults aged 66 to 90 years (N = 177) who responded to a newspaper advertisement for a memory study in Perth, Western Australia. MEASUREMENTS: The General Frequency of Forgetting scale (for memory complaints), Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (for depressive symptoms), NEO-Five Factor Inventory (for conscientiousness and neuroticism), and the Visual Reproduction and Logical Memory subtests from the Wechsler Memory Scale-4th Edition (for visual and verbal memory). RESULTS: The hierarchical regression analysis indicated that while depressive symptoms significantly predicted memory complaints after variance associated with age, gender, education, memory performance, and conscientiousness was partialled out, they accounted for almost none of the variance in complaints when neuroticism was partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: The well-established relationship between depression and memory complaints may exist in some community-dwelling older adult populations only on account of the manner in which both are associated with neuroticism.

Age and premorbid intelligence suppress complaint-performance congruency in raw score measures of memory.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to examine the role of age and premorbid intelligence (IQ) in suppressing the relationship between subjective memory complaints (SMCs) and raw score memory performance. METHODS: We used a community sample of older adults aged 66-90 years (N = 121) to test whether the inclusion of age and a premorbid IQ measure in multiple regression analyses increased semipartial correlations of raw score memory performance in predicting SMCs. Rank contrast correlations were also carried out to observe how age and premorbid IQ are related to complaint-performance congruency. Measures utilized in the study included the Memory Functioning Questionnaire (for SMCs), Visual Reproduction and Logical Memory Subtests (memory performance), and the National Adult Reading Test (premorbid IQ). RESULTS: Inclusion of age and premorbid IQ in the multiple regression analyses increased semipartial correlations for all raw score measures of memory. Both age and premorbid IQ were significantly related to complaint-performance congruency, whereby older participants and those with lower premorbid IQ scores rated their memory abilities more leniently than younger and higher premorbid IQ participants. CONCLUSION: The results suggest differences in age and premorbid IQ play a small role in suppressing the relationship between SMCs and memory performance when utilizing raw score measures of memory.