ABSTRACT

Introduction: Growing access to both legitimate and dubious sources of health information makes accurate source memory increasingly important, yet it may be negatively impacted by conditions that impair prefrontal functioning, including HIV. This study hypothesized that instructions supporting source encoding on a health-related memory task would disproportionately benefit source memory of people with HIV (PWH), and to examine the pattern of source memory errors that are observed.

Method: 102 individuals (61 HIV+, 41 HIV-) completed comprehensive neurobehavioral (including health literacy) and neuromedical evaluations, and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions for a health-related memory task: Attend to Source Instructions explicitly participants to attend to the source of health statements presented to them, which were either health professionals or lay-persons, whereas no such instruction was provided in a Control Instructions condition.

Results: There was no significant interaction of HIV status by condition or main effect of HIV (ps>.05). There was a main effect of condition whereby those who received Attend to Source Instructions performed better on item-corrected source memory than those in the Control Instructions condition (p =.04). Those who received Control Instructions were more likely to misattribute the source of the health information to a health professional when the correct source was a lay-person (Cohen’s d = −0.53), which was correlated with poorer overall cognitive performance (p =.008) and performance-based measures of health literacy (ps<.05).

Conclusions: Given that people are rarely reminded to attend to the source of new health information in the real world, the risk for misattributing health information to a qualified health professional in the absence of such instructions raises the concern that people may readily incorporate questionable health recommendations into their health regimen, particularly among persons with poorer cognitive functioning and lower levels of health literacy. This may have significant downstream health consequences such as drug interactions, side effects, and inefficacy.

摘要

简介：越来越多地访问合法和可疑的健康信息来源使得准确的来源记忆变得越来越重要，但它可能会受到损害前额叶功能的条件（包括艾滋病毒）的负面影响。本研究假设支持健康相关记忆任务的源编码的指令将不成比例地有益于 HIV 感染者 (PWH) 的源记忆，并检查观察到的源记忆错误的模式。

方法：102 人（61 名 HIV+，41 名 HIV-）完成了全面的神经行为（包括健康素养）和神经医学评估，并被随机分配到两个条件之一，以进行与健康相关的记忆任务：参加明确的来源说明参与者参加提供给他们的健康声明的来源，可能是卫生专业人员或非专业人士，而在控制说明条件下没有提供此类说明。

结果：HIV状态与HIV状态或主效应之间没有显着的交互作用( p s>.05)。有一个条件的主要影响，即那些接受关注源指令的人在项目纠正的源记忆上的表现优于控制指令条件下的人 ( p =.04)。当正确的信息来源是外行时（Cohen's d = -0.53），接受控制指令的人更有可能将健康信息的来源错误归因于健康专业人士，这与较差的整体认知表现相关（p =.008 ) 和基于绩效的健康素养测量 ( p s<.05)。

结论：鉴于现实世界中很少有人提醒人们注意新健康信息的来源，在没有此类说明的情况下将健康信息错误分配给合格的健康专业人员的风险引发了人们可能很容易采纳有问题的健康建议的担忧纳入他们的健康方案，特别是在认知功能较差和健康素养水平较低的人群中。这可能会产生显着的下游健康后果，例如药物相互作用、副作用和无效。