The impact of beliefs about memory ability on cognitive skill and lived experience in older adults

超过50%的70岁以上老人担心记忆力减退（F. Jessen et al., 2010）。这种担忧对心理健康有负面影响，甚至会影响记忆的准确性（Bowen et al ., 2019; Irak & Kaplan, 2018）。在这里，我建议仔细调查对痴呆症和认知能力下降的恐惧的潜在因素，看看它们是如何影响老年人的生活经历的。尽管有证据表明，随着人们年龄的增长，他们对自己的记忆有更高程度的错误信念，也更担心自己的记忆是否准确，但目前还没有系统的研究来检验这将对生活经历产生的影响，以及这将如何影响认知技能。在这里，我将调查关于记忆准确性的知识是如何随着年龄的增长而变化的，以及相关的信念是如何影响老年人的生活的。我将把重点放在心理健康和生活质量上，因为之前的研究表明，这些都受到对记忆能力的信念的影响。我将调查社会行为是否受到记忆信念的影响，因为社会互动已被证明是记忆丧失最重要的保护机制之一。这些因素对社会和个人都很重要。该项目将更好地了解关于记忆的知识和信念如何影响生活经验，并将为如何改善老年人的生活提供有价值的信息。

More than 50 % of those over 70 years of age worry about memory loss (F. Jessen et al., 2010). This worry has a negative effect on mental health and can even impact memory accuracy (Bowen et al, 2019; Irak & Kaplan, 2018). Here I propose to carefully investigate the factors underlying fear of dementia and cognitive decline and look at how that affects older people's life experiences.Although there is evidence that as people age they have a higher degree of false beliefs about their memory and heightened concern about whether their memory is accurate, there has been no systematic study examining the life experiences this will affect and how this impacts on cognitive skills. Here I will investigate how knowledge about memory accuracy changes in older age and how the associated beliefs affect the lives of older adults. I will focus on mental health and quality of life as previous research has shown that these are influenced by beliefs about memory ability. I will investigate whether social behaviour is influenced by memory beliefs, as social interaction has proven to be one of the most important protective mechanisms of memory loss. These factors are important both for society but also for the individual. The project will provide a better understanding of how knowledge and beliefs about memory influence lived experience and it will give valuable information on how to improve the lives of older adults.