Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Contextual variation in cognitive performance of older adults: Demonstration of an age-of-examiner effect

Publication date2023-10-03
First online date2022-12-19
Abstract

Objective: Consistent with research on stereotype threat, when examiners' characteristics make a stereotype of the participant group salient, it can hamper participants' performance. We hypothesized that younger examiners represent a subtle element activating age stereotypes, leading older people to perform worse as examiners' age decreases. Method: We analyzed data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE; NParticipants = 32768) and Vivre-Leben-Vivere studies (VLV, Nparticipants = 960), wherein older people were tested at home by examiners of different ages on eight cognitive tasks. Results: Our results indicate that participants' performance on five tasks was positively linked to examiners' age, showing that the older the examiner, the better the participants' performance. Conclusions: These findings could have implications for the current assessment of memory performance among older adults.

Keywords
  • Examiner’s age effect
  • Cognitive performance
  • Stereotype threat
Citation (ISO format)
DESRICHARD, Olivier et al. Contextual variation in cognitive performance of older adults: Demonstration of an age-of-examiner effect. In: Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section D, The clinical neuropsychologist, 2023, vol. 37, n° 7, p. 1428–1440. doi: 10.1080/13854046.2022.2150689
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Article (Published version)
Identifiers
Journal ISSN1385-4046
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184downloads

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