Stereotype Threat To The Elderly Recognition Memory In Rats And Its Mechanism

At present, more and more countries have stepped into the aging of populationstage, and the problems about the older age group have become increasinglyprominent, therefore, the study field of aging in cognition function has been animportant topic. Research on aging and memory has produced an impressive body ofwork demonstrating that many memory abilities decline with age, a decline thatmany have suggested is associated with physiological changes. Another body ofresearch has examined the role that people’s stereotypes about their memory abilityplay in their performance, which is also the theme of the present study focusing onpsychological rather physiological variations. Research has demonstrated that olderadults’ memory performance is adversely affected when negative stereotypes aboutaging are activated in the performance context, however, most of them were aimedat the conditions and influencing factors of stereotype threat in older adults, and theunderlying mechanism of stereotype threat in older remain poorly understood.What’s more, there is few research about stereotype threat in China, especially onaccount of the older adults group. The present research was designed to address twoissues with respect to the stereotype threat on older adults’ memory: the adverseeffect and the underlying mechanism.The present research included three experiments. In experiment1, weexamined the impact of stereotype threat on recognition memory, with specificinterest in (a) the generalizability of previously observed effects,(b) the moderatingeffects of task demands, and (c) the mediating effect of workingmemory(WM)capacity. A2(Stereotype Condition: threat or non-threat)×2(ResponseCondition: limited or unlimited) factorial design was used, with the former factorvaried between subjects and the latter within subjects. Older participants subjectedto threat performed worse in the recognition memory task than did those innon-threat condition but only whenperformanceconstraints were high (i.e. memorydecisions had be made within a limited time frame), and the threat effect was absentwhen constraints were minimal.The results also showed that the threat effect in recognition memory performance was mediated by participants’WMcapacity.In experiment2, we explored whether older adults with a high WM capacityare were more able than their low-WM counterparts to resist stereotype threat, andthe moderating effects of task expectations.A2(Stereotype Condition: threat ornon-threat)×2(WM Capacity: high or low) factorial design was used, with both factorvaried between subjects. Older participants subjected to threat performed worse inthe recognition memory task than did those in non-threat condition for both groupwith high and low WM capacity, and the Stereotype condition×WM Capacityinteraction was not found. The results also found that the threat effect was notmoderated by task expectations.In experiment3, the aim was to investigating the role of three major facetsof executive functions, namely shifting, updating and inhibition, on the stereotypethreat effects. We found that stereotype threat consumed WM resources in olderadults and significantly impaired older adults’ updating performance.The results show:1.older adults’ memory performance is adversely affectedwhen negative stereotypes about aging are activated in the performance context.2.Stereotype threat consumed WM resources in older adults which causes theimpairment of recognition memory performance with high constraints.3.Stereotypethreat effect is not moderated by task expectations.4. Stereotype threat causes thereduction of WM capacity and the impairment of updating function.