Is Medical Environment Detrimental to Memory? A Test of A White Coat Effect on Older People's Memory Performance

Test if older people's memory assessment may be impacted by a medical environment and if memory self-efficacy (MSE) will moderate this effect.

We evaluated memory performance and MSE in 27 older adults in two different settings: a (control) university research environment, or a (proxy-medical) neuropsychological examination environment.

The results showed a MSE × environment interaction effect on story-recall performance, with older people with low MSE performing less well in the proxy-medical situation than in the control situation and with elders with high MSE performing better in the proxy-medical situation than in the control situation. The same marginally significant effect for the word-span task was also found.

Testing in a medical environment undermines the memory performance of older people with low MSE and boosts performance of older people with high MSE. Clinical Implications We encourage neuropsychologists to pay attention to psychosocial determinants of older people's performance when assessing their memory abilities.