Our results showed that ST can cause older people to perform at pathological levels on executive tasks. Results highlight the need for clinicians to be cautious when conducting neuropsychological assessments of older people who express high levels of dementia worry.

Our results suggest that diagnosis threat instructions may have challenged moderate- and high-internal contact-sport participants, leading them to outperform compared to the neutral condition. Individuals who have moderate and high levels of internal locus of control may have higher performance under diagnosis threat compared to the neutral condition because of their feeling of control over their cognitive performance.

There is vigorous debate regarding the possibility that ADHD is overdiagnosed in boys. We investigated the impact of the gender stereotype depicting boys as inattentive and impulsive on neuropsychological assessment (observation of psychology students and child's cognitive performance). In experiment 1, after the stereotype was activated, psychology students rated a "boy," a "girl," or a "child" on a behavioral assessment scale. In experiment 2, 103 children (boys and girls) completed neuropsychological tasks under stereotype threat or neutral conditions. The gender stereotype led psychology students to assess a child's behaviors more negatively if they thought the child was a boy. Boys' performance on one cognitive score declined following stereotype threat. Regression path analyses suggested moderation by stigma consciousness. Additionally, there were mediating and suppressing (through stereotype endorsement) effects. Our results suggest that the gender stereotype might contribute to the overdiagnosis of ADHD in boys.

Since stereotypes about people with acquired brain injury (ABI) can lead to prejudice, studying these stereotypes is highly important. In two studies, we examined these stereotypes both on idiosyncratic dimensions and on the two dimensions of the Stereotype Content Model. Participants completed a specific questionnaire about ABI and warmth and competence questionnaires regarding people with ABI and other social groups. Specific stereotypes about ABI were found to be underpinned by dimensions of "cognitive impairments and ADL limitations," "catastrophic outcomes," and "personal and interpersonal development." Within the model, people with ABI were seen as being warm but incompetent. The ambivalent ABI stereotype could elicit prejudicial attitudes that may impede rehabilitation.

Neuropsychological assessment is known to be influenced by expectancy effects, which can either enhance (placebo) or diminish (nocebo) cognitive performance. Research suggests that the response expectancy effect is influenced by various individual and situational factors and that the placebo effect results in an increase in monitoring processes as measured indirectly. However, the impact on monitoring processes has not yet been studied by direct measures such as Judgement Of Learning (JOL). This study aimed to investigate the response expectancy effect on various neuropsychological tasks, including a task that directly assesses monitoring capacities (JOL). In addition to determining which cognitive functions are influenced by the expectancy effect, this study examined the moderating role of the self-transcendence dimension of personality. Eighty healthy subjects were exposed to three bogus conditions presented as allegedly having a positive, negative, or no impact on cognitive capacities. Then they completed, in random order, three blocks of tasks (executive, attentional, and memory), one in each condition. Results showed an effect of negative instructions on flexibility (poorer performance) and memory (better performance) scores. Furthermore, positive instructions led to better explicit monitoring capacities (JOL) than the neutral condition. These effects were moderated by self-transcendence, as only participants with moderate or high self-transcendence exhibited these effects. Overall, our results showed that the response expectancy effect emerges from a combination of individual and cognitive factors.