The Effect And Mechanism Of Aging Stereotype Threat On The Academic Performance Of The Map In The Elderly

Memory decline can seriously affect the daily life and physical and mental health of the elderly.In the past decade,researchers have begun to explore the reasons for memory decline in the elderly from the social perspective,stereotype threat has attracted wide attention.Aging stereotype threat risk is due to the society holding social negative stereotypes of the elderly,enable the elderly to awareness to the negative image clues about themselves,fear of having their own performance will be verified the negative stereotypes,eventually led to the poor memory performance.Based on the comprehensive process model in the field of stereotype threat,this study selected map learning tasks that are important to the daily life of the elderly,explored the effect of stereotype threat on spatial memory of the elderly and mechanism.In the first experiment,26 elderly subjects were used to investigate the anxiety mechanism of stereotype threat by using the dot probe task and autonomic arousal index.In the second experiment,26 elderly subjects were used to investigate the anxiety mechanism of stereotype threat by using situational setting and guidance.A single-factor intersubject design was used to investigate the effect of aging stereotype threat on the performance of map learning task in the elderly.Because successful experience can help individuals affirm their ability and build confidence,it can effectively alleviate the anxiety of the subjects.In the second experiment,39 elderly participants were used to investigate the effect of successful experience on aging stereotype threat by activating the game success experience before the map learning task.Multi-guide physiological recorder was used for real-time monitoring of multiple physiological indexes including skin electricity,heart rate,skin temperature.The results show that:(1)In the dot probe task,the attentional bias of the aging stereotype threat group was significantly greater than control group.In the memory task,the memory performance of the aging stereotype threat group was significantly lower than control group,and the heart rate and skin electrical response were significantly higher than control group.(2)After the intervention stage,the pleasurable emotional experience of the intervention group after threat was significantly higher than that of the non-intervention group and the control group after threat.In the memory task,skin electricity and heart rate of the intervention group were significantly lower than those of the non-intervention group,and memory performance of the intervention group was significantly higher than that of the non-intervention group.In conclusion,this study concluded that priming aging stereotype threat can induce anxiety and affect memory performance in the elderly.The successful experience of the prior task can effectively intervene the stereotype threat of aging.