highlighting-reducing-impact-negative-aging-stereotypes-during-older

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing

As life expectancy increases, aging has become a major health challenge, resulting in a huge effort to better discriminate between normal and pathological ...

Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté

The number of older people diagnosed with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), the prodromal state of Alzheimer's disease (AD), is increasing worldwide. However, some patients with aMCI never convert to the AD type of dementia, with some remaining stable and others reverting to normal. This overdiagnosis bias has been largely overlooked and gone unexplained. There is ample evidence in the laboratory that negative ageing stereotypes (eg, the culturally shared belief that ageing inescapably causes severe cognitive decline) contribute to the deteriorating cognitive performances of healthy older adults, leading them to perform below their true abilities. The study described here is intended to test for the first time whether such stereotypes also impair patients' cognitive performances during neuropsychological examinations in memory clinics, resulting in overdiagnosis of aMCI.

Marie Mazerolle

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