Recent work suggests that most older adults who volunteer to take part in cognitive experiments are more motivated to do well than are undergraduate students. This empirical evidence is echoed by the impressions of cognitive aging researchers. We surveyed a large group (N = 88) of researchers asking about their perceptions of younger and older adults’ motivation to take part in lab-based research. Not only were older adults seen as more motivated than younger adults, but researchers thought that the two groups participate for different reasons: younger adults to obtain course credit or monetary compensation, older adults to get a sense of their cognitive health, to further science, and out of curiosity. However, older adults’ greater motivation to do well on cognitive tasks may leave them vulnerable to stereotype threat, the phenomenon by which individuals underperform when they are put in a position to either confirm or deny a negative stereotype about their group. In this opinion piece, we argue that most cognitive experiments, not just those designed to measure stereotype threat, likely induce some form of performance-related anxiety in older adults. This anxiety likely leads to greater task-related interference, or thoughts about how one is doing on the task, resulting in poorer performance. We discuss some of the potential implications for our understanding of neurocognitive aging.

最近的研究表明，大多数自愿参加认知实验的老年人比本科生更有动力做好。这一经验证据与认知老化研究人员的印象相呼应。我们调查了一大群人（N= 88) 的研究人员询问他们对年轻人和老年人参与实验室研究的动机的看法。不仅老年人被认为比年轻人更有动力，而且研究人员认为这两个群体参与的原因不同：年轻人获得课程学分或金钱补偿，老年人了解他们的认知健康，进一步科学，并且出于好奇。然而，老年人在认知任务上表现出色的更大动力可能使他们容易受到刻板印象威胁，即当个人处于确认或否认对其群体的负面刻板印象时，个人表现不佳的现象。在这篇评论文章中，我们认为大多数认知实验，而不仅仅是那些旨在衡量刻板印象威胁的实验，可能会在老年人中引起某种形式的与表现相关的焦虑。这种焦虑可能会导致更大的与任务相关的干扰，或对一个人在任务中的表现的思考，从而导致更差的表现。我们讨论了一些对我们理解神经认知衰老的潜在影响。