Effects Of Aging Stereotype Threat On Witnessing Memory And Coping Strategies In Older Adults

Memory plays an important part in the daily life of the elderly,especially when it comes to their physical and mental health.The decline of memory is not only affected by cognitive function of the brain,but also by social cognitive factors.Aging stereotypes refer to people’s beliefs and expectations about the elderly group,among which,negative aging stereotypes can have harmful effects on a range of cognitive and physical functions of the elderly,especially their memory.Eyewitness memory refers to the eyewitness’ memory of the specific details in the past case.It is a special source of memory.Eyewitness memory is of significantly practical value in real life.Experiment 1 focuses on the impact of aging stereotype threat on the emotion and eyewitness memory of the elderly adults.By using mixed experimental design of 2(groups: threat group vs control group)x 2(stages: threat priming stage vs memory task stage),the aging stereotype threat was stimulated with instructions in a certain situation.At the same time,the physiological permeameter was applied to monitor the real-time physiological indexes of heart rate,galvanic skin response and skin temperature.Experiment 2 further explores the intervention effect of successful experience on the threat of aging stereotype,that is,whether giving the elderly a direct successful game experience can reduce the effect of stereotype threat and improve the performance of eyewitness memory.In this experiment,a mixed experimental design of 3(groups:threat intervention group,control group vs threat non-intervention group)× 3(stages: threat priming stage,game task stage vs memory task stage)was used and the real-time autonomic nervous activity data of the elderly was collected.The results show that:(1)In Experiment 1,during the threat priming stage,the threat group was significantly in a lower mood compared with the baseline.During the memory task stage,the heart rate and the galvanic skin response in the threat group were significantly higher than those in the control group,but the witness memory scores in the control group were significantly higher than those in the threat group.(2)In Experiment 2,during the threat priming stage,the anxiety levels were significantly higher in the threat intervention group than in the control group and the threat non-intervention group,while the heart rate and the galvanic skin response were significantly higher in the threat intervention group and the non-intervention group than the control group.During the game task stage,the levels of pleasant emotions in the threat intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group and the threat non-intervention group.Meanwhile,the heart rate and the galvanic skin response in the control group were significantly lower than those in the threat intervention group or the non-intervention group.In the stage of memory task,the heart rate and the galvanic skin response of the threat intervention group and the control group were significantly lower than those of the threat non-intervention group,and the eyewitness memory scores of the threat intervention group and the control group were significantly higher than those of the threat non-intervention group.In summary,this study concludes that the threat of aging stereotype will have a negative impact on the emotions of the elderly and then damage their eyewitness memory performance.However,giving the elderly a successful experience can effectively resist the stereotype threat effect,thus improving eyewitness memory performance.