Stereotype threat describes the situation where an individual is faced with the risk of upholding a negative stereotype about a subgroup to which that person belongs based on his/her actions (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Empirical investigations of stereotype threat effects across a variety of individuals, subgroups, and contexts have identified a number of undesirable consequences related to performance on domain-relevant tasks (e.g., Nguyen & Ryan, 2008; Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1998; Steele, Spencer & Aronson, 2002). Efforts to identify the psychological mechanisms and processes most directly affected by stereotype threat have indicated that one of its most detrimental influences is exerted on individuals' working memory capacity. More specifically, the added cognitive and emotional-regulatory strain introduced by the presence of stereotype threat uses up a portion of one's limited working memory capacity, thus "hijacking" cognitive resources that could otherwise have been put towards completing task-relevant activities/performance (Schmader, Johns, & Forbes, 2008).Given the importance of working memory to the development of new knowledge, skills, and abilities (cf., Feldman Barrett, Tugade, & Engle, 2004), the primary goal of the present investigation was to extend and build upon recent research examining the acquisition of task-relevant knowledge by individuals facing conditions of stereotype threat during their learning activities (Rydell, Rydell, & Boucher, 2010; Rydell, Shiffrin, Boucher, Van Loo, & Rydell, 2010). Guided by an empirically grounded taxonomy of critical learning outcomes (Kraiger,Ford, & Salas, 1993), the knowledge organization and development of task strategies were examined for 145 female learners assigned into either stereotype threat or control conditions. Individuals were tasked with learning to operate a low-fidelity computer-based radar tracking simulation over the course of three experimental sessions held on consecutive days. Based on principles of active learning (Bell & Kozlowski, 2008), the presentation of content/materials followed an exploratory learning paradigm which facilitates task comprehension through the use/improvement of learners' inferential reasoning capabilities (e.g., McDaniel & Schlager, 1990).Key findings of this study indicated that, unlike females who learned the task under control conditions, females facing stereotype threat experienced the greatest difficulty acquiring effective heuristics critical to improving task performance. Examination of participants' knowledge structures revealed that although female learners under stereotype threat were capable of deducing advanced relations amongst relevant task concepts over time, they appeared to do so in a manner that was far less efficient and, consequently, less conducive to performance when required to apply their knowledge in more demanding task conditions. Further analyses indicated that females under conditions of stereotype threat were not only less accurate at applying their learned knowledge to task-critical decisions, but the manner in which they had learned to interpret information presented to them in the task was generally also less optimal. Lastly, the observed pattern of results revealed that the above effects did not manifest immediately during initial onset of learning activities and required time for meaningful differences to emerge, suggesting that longitudinal examinations of stereotype threat effects are an important direction for future research.
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