Université de Franche-Comté, LINC, MSHE, F-25000, Besançon, France.
Univ Rouen Normandie, Normandie Univ, CRFDP UR 7475, F-76000, Rouen, France.
Mem Cognit. 2024 Apr;52(3):622-631. doi: 10.3758/s13421-023-01488-2. Epub 2023 Nov 16.
Very little is known about whether and how socioemotional factors influence age differences in associative memory. Here, we tested the hypothesis that reducing the threat induced by age-based stereotypes can reduce age differences in learning performance and strategy. Using an associative learning task, we replicated the classic finding of age differences under a high-threat condition: older adults had longer reaction times than younger adults and were much more reluctant to use memory retrieval. However, age differences were greatly diminished under a low-threat condition. These findings demonstrate that memory retrieval is an ability not entirely lost as individuals age because merely reducing stereotype threat helped restoring it. We conclude that socioemotional factors, such as stereotype threat, should be considered when evaluating younger and older adults' memory performance.
关于社会情感因素是否以及如何影响联想记忆中的年龄差异，人们知之甚少。在这里，我们检验了这样一个假设，即减少基于年龄的刻板印象所带来的威胁，可以降低学习表现和策略上的年龄差异。我们使用联想学习任务，在高威胁条件下复制了年龄差异的经典发现：老年人的反应时间比年轻人长，并且更不愿意使用记忆检索。然而，在低威胁条件下，年龄差异大大减少。这些发现表明，记忆检索是一种随着年龄增长不会完全丧失的能力，因为仅仅减少刻板印象威胁就有助于恢复这种能力。我们的结论是，在评估年轻人和老年人的记忆表现时，应该考虑社会情感因素，如刻板印象威胁。
