Cognitive Design

Be Sure to Factor Biases about Cognition into Your Design

As we age our memory gets worse, right? Holding that negative stereotype, or believing others around you hold it, can in fact make your memory worse. Or so reports researchers from North Carolina State University.  They report: 

“For example, older adults will perform more poorly on a memory test if they are told that older folks do poorly on that particular type of memory test,” Hess says. Memory also suffers if senior citizens believe they are being “stigmatized,” meaning that others are looking down on them because of their age.”  

I have seen similar studies even ones that have an impact on where folks score on the dementia scale.   

This is an important finding for cognitive designers working on applications for highly educated elderly, especially 70 and up.    (more…)