The purpose of the current study was to examine the predictive roles of stereotype threat and perceived discrimination and the mediating role of examiner-examinee racial discordance on neuropsychological performance in a non-clinical sample of African American and Caucasian individuals. Ninety-two African American (n = 45) and Caucasian (n = 47) adults were randomly assigned to either a stereotype threat or non-threat condition. Within each condition, participants were randomly assigned to either a same race or different race examiner. All participants underwent neuropsychological testing and completed a measure of perceived discrimination. African Americans in the stereotype threat condition performed significantly worse on global NP (Mz = −.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] [−0.07, −0.67] than African Americans in the non-threat condition (Mz = 0.09, CI [0.15, 0.33]. African Americans who reported high levels of perceived discrimination performed significantly worse on memory tests when tested by an examiner of a different race, Mz = −1.19, 95% CI [−1.78, −.54], than African Americans who were tested by an examiner of the same race, Mz = 0.24, 95% CI [−0.24, 0.72]. The current study underscores the importance of considering the role of contextual variables in neuropsychological performance, as these variables may obscure the validity of results among certain racial/ethnic groups.

The authors examined the impact of HIV, cognitive dysfunction, and depression on decision-making. HIV+ (N=100) and HIV− (N=26) participants were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, a modified version of the Iowa Gambling Task, and a measure of depressive symptoms. HIV+ participants demonstrated more difficulties in learning the gambling task than did HIV− participants. Executive functioning and depression emerged as strong predictors of gambling task performance. Depression partially mediated the relationship between executive functioning and gambling performance. Our findings suggest that HIV infection, executive dysfunction, and depression place individuals at risk for poor decision-making.

Background The basal ganglia (BG) are involved in executive language functions (i.e., verbal fluency) through their connections with cortical structures. The caudate and putamen receive separate inputs from prefrontal and premotor cortices, and may differentially contribute to verbal fluency performance. We examined BG integrity in relation to lexicosemantic verbal fluency performance among older HIV infected adults. Method 20 older (50+ years) HIV+ adults underwent MRI and were administered measures of semantic and phonemic fluency. BG (caudate, putamen) regions of interest were extracted. Results Performance on phonemic word generation significantly predicted caudate volume, whereas performance on phonemic switching predicted putamen volume. Conclusions These findings suggest a double dissociation of BG involvement in verbal fluency tasks with the caudate subserving word generation and the putamen associated with switching. As such, verbal fluency tasks appear to be selective to BG function.

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