MEDICAL ENVIRONMENT INFORMATION PROCESSED IN ELDERLY--HEALTH BEHAVIOR

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In this proposal, we study how information in the medical environment that is process below a conscious awareness can affect the manner in which older adults represent their health, the medical decisions that they make, and their demonstrated physical function. The proposed work will begin to provide us with an understanding of how to design psychologically-optimal medical environments. Moreover, we also determine how e can increase the probability that compliance with medical instructions can be enhanced by strengthening the automatic aspects of everyday behavior. Automatic processes occur in situations where some aspect of the environment activates a knowledge structure and that activation continues to influence our behavior even through we are unaware of it. For example, young adults walked more slowly to the elevator at the end of an experiment after they subliminally processed words that were stereotypical of aging like "forgetful, Florida, and bingo." Research indicates that such low effort automatic processes are a pervasive aspect of our daily lives and that these automatic processes do not decline with age, unlike many other types of cognitive function. Other data have indicated that automatic processes play an important role in bridging the gulf between intention and completion of a behavior, such as wanting to exercise but then not showing up for exercise class. In these experiments, we propose to (a) understand how the decor and incidental information present in a physician's office can activate constructs of health of frailty and have a substantive impact of a range of medical behaviors in older adults; (b) determine how subliminally presenting information activating constructs of aging/frailty impacts on symptom reporting, physician-patient interactions, and hypothetical medical decisions. Finally, we develop intervention techniques that strengthen the automatic components of intentions to complete a medical behavior--in this case, compliance with an exercise program prescribed by a physician. The results of these studies will provide us with information about how to structure medical environments and interactions to minimize over-reporting of symptoms, increase patients' reliance on inexpensive but effective behavioral treatments for some health conditions, and increase the probability that compliance with physician instructions occur.