Stereotype threat in older adults

老年人的刻板印象威胁

• 批准号: 8761731
• 负责人: Sarah J Barber
• 金额: $ 24.68万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-15 至 2016-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8761731
• 关键词: Accounting; Affect; Age; Age-associated memory impairment; Alzheimer' s Disease; American; Arousal; Censuses; Clinical; Cognitive; Data; Decision Making; Dementia; Development; Diagnostic; Elderly; Emotional; Environment; Genetic screening method; Health; Hearing; Hearing Tests; Impairment; Individual; Intervention; Medicare; Memory; Outcome; Pattern; Performance; Personal Satisfaction; Physiological; Prevention; Process; Psyche structure; Race; Religion; Research; Resources; Risk; Role; Short-Term Memory; Social Identification; Socioeconomic Status; Stereotyping; Stimulus; Testing; Vision Screening; Vision Tests; Visuospatial; Weight; base; cost; executive function; forgetting; improved; meetings; neuropsychological; public health relevance; screening; skills; theories; therapy design; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Almost everyone has at least one social identity that is associated with a negative stereotype. For some people it is their age, for others it is their race, weight, religion, socioeconomic status or political affiliation. Problematically, according t stereotype threat theory, when people encounter these negative stereotypes they often underperform compared to their potential, and in doing so inadvertently confirm the stereotype. For example, older adults are stereotyped as having poor memory abilities. When this stereotype becomes salient to older adults their memory performance tends to decrease. This has serious clinical implications. In one study, stereotype threat increased the proportion of older adults scoring below the clinical cut-off for dementia from 14 to 70%. Given that 20% of Americans will be over the age of 65 by 2030, and that annual dementia screenings are now covered by Medicare, it is important to understand why stereotype threat impairs older adults' performance and how stereotype-threat-related performance deficits can be ameliorated. In Aim 1, we test the role of regulatory focus in contributing to older adults' stereotype threat effects. Regulatory focus theory leads to the counterintuitive hypothesis that although stereotype threat impairs performance when the task emphasizes gains, it should improve performance when the task emphasizes losses. Our preliminary data supports this; stereotype threat impaired older adults' memory when remembering led to gains, but improved memory when forgetting led to losses. In this application we test the generalizability of these results by examining how stereotype threat affects older adults' performance in other cognitive (e.g., verbal fluency, visuospatial skills, decision quality) and non-cognitive (i.e., screened vision and hearing) domains. Many of these domains have not previously been examined. If our regulatory focus predictions are consistently supported, it would suggest that emphasizing the importance of avoiding errors during assessments could be a simple, no-cost clinical intervention to eliminate stereotype threat effects. In Aim 2, we examine the contribution of physiological arousal to older adults' stereotype threat effects. Recently we proposed an arousal-biased competition (ABC) theory. According to our ABC theory, arousal increases the processing of high priority stimuli and decreases processing of low priority stimuli. Preliminary studies support this hypothesis. Of relevance to this application, based upon the regulatory focus theory we predict that under stereotype threat loss-related information is high priority and gain-related information is low priority. Thus, according to ABC theory, arousal should enhance the regulatory focus effects predicted above. Finally, Aim 3 is to examine the functional implications of stereotype threat for older adults. Thus, the domains in which we test our Aim 1 and 2 hypotheses each have relevance for older adults' health, practical, and financial well-being. We also test the hypothesi that genetic testing for Alzheimer's disease carries the risk of inducing stereotype threat and reducing memory performance in asymptomatic, healthy older adults.

描述（由申请人提供）：几乎每个人都至少有一种与负面刻板印象相关的社会身份。对于某些人来说，这是他们的年龄，对于另一些人来说，则是他们的种族、体重、宗教、社会经济地位或政治立场。问题在于，根据刻板印象威胁理论，当人们遇到这些负面刻板印象时，他们的表现往往低于自己的潜力，并且这样做无意中证实了刻板印象。例如，老年人被刻板印象为记忆能力差。当这种刻板印象在老年人中变得突出时，他们的记忆力往往会下降。这具有严重的临床意义。在一项研究中，刻板印象威胁使得分低于痴呆症临床临界值的老年人比例从 14% 增加到 70%。鉴于到 2030 年，20% 的美国人将超过 65 岁，并且每年的痴呆症筛查现已纳入医疗保险范围内，因此了解为什么刻板印象威胁会损害老年人的表现以及与刻板印象威胁相关的表现缺陷如何影响老年人的表现非常重要。得到改善。在目标 1 中，我们测试了监管重点在促进老年人刻板印象威胁效应中的作用。 监管焦点理论导致了一个反直觉的假设，即尽管当任务强调收益时，刻板印象威胁会损害绩效，但当任务强调损失时，它应该提高绩效。我们的初步数据支持这一点；当记忆带来收益时，刻板印象威胁会损害老年人的记忆力，但当遗忘导致损失时，记忆力会得到改善。在此应用中，我们通过检查刻板印象威胁如何影响老年人在其他认知（例如语言流畅性、视觉空间技能、决策质量）和非认知（即筛查的视力和听力）领域的表现来测试这些结果的普遍性。其中许多领域以前从未被检查过。如果我们的监管重点预测得到一致支持，则表明强调评估过程中避免错误的重要性可能是一种简单、免费的临床干预措施，可以消除刻板印象威胁效应。在目标 2 中，我们研究了生理唤醒对老年人刻板印象威胁效应的影响。最近我们提出了唤醒偏向竞争（ABC）理论。根据我们的 ABC 理论，觉醒会增加对高优先级刺激的处理，并减少对低优先级刺激的处理。初步研究支持这一假设。与此应用相关的是，根据监管焦点理论，我们预测在刻板印象下，与威胁损失相关的信息具有高优先级，与收益相关的信息具有低优先级。因此，根据 ABC 理论，唤醒应该会增强上述预测的调节焦点效应。最后，目标 3 是研究刻板印象威胁对老年人的功能影响。因此，我们测试目标 1 和目标 2 假设的领域均与老年人的健康、实际和财务状况相关。我们还测试了这样一个假设，即阿尔茨海默病的基因检测可能会导致无症状的健康老年人的刻板印象威胁和记忆力下降。