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

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.