Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Gerontology and Vulnerability, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2019 Apr 12;74(4):625-632. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbx097.
The current study examined the effects of stereotype threat on prospective memory (PM) performance in younger versus older adults by using a focal (i.e., low cognitive demands) and a nonfocal (i.e., high cognitive demands) PM task.
Sixty younger and 60 older adults performed an event-based PM task, in which task instructions were experimentally manipulated. Half of the participants received instructions that emphasized the memory component of the task (memory condition; i.e., high stereotype threat for older adults) whereas the other half was instructed that the task evaluated participants' reading-ability (reading condition; i.e., low stereotype threat).
Older adults' PM performance was worse than younger adults' only in the memory condition and these effects were specific for nonfocal PM cues as well as for old-old adults.
Conceptually, this indicates that stereotype threat particularly impacts age effects for cognitive processes associated with executive control and that this particularly affects old-old adults. Therefore, the current findings illustrate for the first time that age differences in PM can be influenced by stereotype threat and suggest changes in controlled attention as possible cognitive pathway.
本研究通过使用一个焦点（即低认知需求）和一个非焦点（即高认知需求）前瞻性记忆（PM）任务，考察了刻板印象威胁对年轻和年长成年人 PM 表现的影响。
60 名年轻成年人和 60 名年长成年人进行了基于事件的 PM 任务，在该任务中，实验性地操纵了任务指令。一半参与者接受了强调任务记忆成分的指令（记忆条件；即对年长成年人的高刻板印象威胁），而另一半则被指示任务评估参与者的阅读能力（阅读条件；即低刻板印象威胁）。
只有在记忆条件下，年长成年人的 PM 表现比年轻成年人差，这些影响特定于非焦点 PM 线索以及非常年长的成年人。
从概念上讲，这表明刻板印象威胁特别影响与执行控制相关的认知过程的年龄效应，并且特别影响非常年长的成年人。因此，目前的发现首次表明，PM 的年龄差异可以受到刻板印象威胁的影响，并表明注意力控制的变化可能是认知途径。
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