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14 - Generative Reasoning as Influenced by Depression, Aging, Stereotype Threat, and Prejudice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2010

By
Ulrich von Hecker ,
Grzegorz Sedek ,
Kinga Piber-Dabrowska  and
Sylwia Bedynska
Edited by
Randall W. Engle ,
Grzegorz Sedek ,
Ulrich von Hecker  and
Daniel N. McIntosh
Ulrich von Hecker
Affiliation:
Lecturer, School of Psychology at Cardiff University
Grzegorz Sedek
Affiliation:
Director of the Institute of Social Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Psychology in Poland and professor at the Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Kinga Piber-Dabrowska
Affiliation:
Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Chodakowska 19/31, 03-815 Warsaw, Poland
Sylwia Bedynska
Affiliation:
Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Chodakowska 19/31, 03-815 Warsaw, Poland
Randall W. Engle
Affiliation:
Georgia Institute of Technology
Grzegorz Sedek
Affiliation:
Warsaw School of Social Psychology and Polish Academy of Sciences
Ulrich von Hecker
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
Daniel N. McIntosh
Affiliation:
University of Denver
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Summary

This last and interdisciplinary chapter begins with the observation that in many psychological subdisciplines that call themselves “cognitive,” there is a continuous debate about the specific nature of the mental limitations across different populations. Research in the cognitive aging area focuses on comparisons between older and younger adults in different basic cognitive functions (e.g., attention, working memory) and higher order cognitive functions (e.g., reasoning, comprehension). Research in the cognitive psychopathology area centers around similar comparisons and distinctions among emotionally disturbed versus emotionally stable participants. Finally, in the social cognition area, cognitive limitations and biases produced by strong prejudice or stereotypes are central issues. Researchers from the previously-mentioned domains often refer to the same psychological mechanisms that might interfere with effective cognitive processing. Just to mention a few, these include lack of motivation or cognitive initiative, limited cognitive resources, inefficient inhibitory mechanisms, or oversimplified strategies of information processing. However, there are very few attempts to directly compare the mechanisms underlying those impairments and limitations across different research domains using the same cognitive tasks.

In this chapter, we describe one of our research projects that aimed to compare the performance of individuals from different populations on the same generative reasoning tasks. The populations included depressed versus nondepressed students, older versus younger adults, students threatened by stereotype versus control students, and finally, students with high versus low levels of ethnic prejudice. We noticed that similar kinds of explanations have been suggested to explain the reduced cognitive performance in some of these groups.

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Cognitive Limitations in Aging and Psychopathology , pp. 377 - 401
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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