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Background/Study Context: We are often required to carry out complex tasks in changing, context-dependent ways. This task switching requires the rapid realignment of attention to task constraints and may be age sensitive. Methods: Three experiments, two in which eye movements were recorded, were conducted to assess age-related differences in task switching and inhibitory control. Observers carried out a Same-Different task and Go-No Go task in single and mixed blocks of trials. Results: Other than Experiment 1, although switch costs were observed, they were not larger for older adults compared to younger adults. Furthermore, eye movement and false alarm data demonstrated little evidence of age-related decline in inhibitory and oculomotor control. Conclusions: A major implication is that, at least when two tasks involve different stimuli and unique responses, older adults are no more likely than younger adults to show task-switching costs or inhibition deficit.

The Roadwise Review has been reported to provide an effective means of self-assessing and predicting driving difficulties in older adults. We administered it to 73 community-dwelling older drivers (M = 73 years) and also gathered data on self-reported driving difficulties, 2-year retrospective collisions, and moving violations. The acuity tests and Useful Field of View exhibited substantial ceiling effects that limit predictive utility, and there was a high failure rate on the head and neck flexibility test. Additionally, the Roadwise Review did not predict self-reported driving problems or collision risk. Thus, in current form, it does not appear to be a useful tool for assessing older drivers. Future research efforts should assess predictive validity in a more heterogeneous sample of older adults and with a broader range of outcomes, including on-road driving performance. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

One reason that older drivers may have elevated crash risk is because they anticipate hazardous situations less well than middle-aged drivers. Hazard perception ability has been found to be amenable to training in young drivers. This article reports an experiment in which video-based hazard perception training was given to drivers who were between the ages of 65 and 94 years. Trained participants were significantly faster at anticipating traffic hazards compared with an untrained control group, and this benefit was present even after the authors controlled for pretraining ability. If future research shows these effects to be robust, the implications for driver training and safety are significant.

Sign comprehension is critical for effective driving, responses to warnings, and way-finding. Signs that are poorly comprehended by older people increase accident risk and may compromise independence. This study sought to determine whether iconic sign comprehension suffers in healthy aging and in the presence of cognitive impairment. Additionally, we examined whether the addition of text to iconic signage would increase comprehension in older adults. In Experiment 1, young adults, healthy older adults, and older adults with varying levels of cognitive impairment were asked the meaning of 65 signs used for driving, warnings, and way-finding. Healthy older adults were generally good at sign comprehension but had difficulty with way-finding signs. Older adults with cognitive impairment had poorer sign comprehension overall and particular difficulty with way-finding icons and signs that had icons only. In Experiment 2, healthy older adults were asked the meaning of signs containing icons only, or icons and text. A significant improvement in comprehension was found when text was added. An important implication of this work is that the assessment of sign comprehension needs to involve a broad and heterogeneous sample of older adults reflecting the range of perceptual and cognitive abilities represented in the population.

RÉSUMÉLes procédures de formation cognitive informatique visent à augmenter la sécurité en améliorant les compétences relatives à la conduite, comme la vitesse-de-traitement et le Useful Field of View. L'étude actuelle a évalué l'efficacité du DriveSharp dans la formation des conducteurs âgés dans un cadre de classe réaliste. Les participants (n = 24) ont assisté à 10 heures de cours de DriveSharp pendant 5 semaines. Les séances pré- et post-test ont evalués améliorations sur un essai dynamique de la perception du risque, Trails A et Trails B. Un groupe de contrôle (n = 18) a terminé seulement les séances pré- et post-test. En classe, les temps de formation étaient plus bas que prévus. L'amélioration des participants aux jeux ont stabilisée après la première évaluation, et le groupe de DriveSharp n'a pas démontré une amélioration significative des performances sur les tests, par rapport au groupe de contrôle. Parmi plusieurs questions relatives à la facilité d'utilisation, les plus problématiques étaient le malentendudes objectifs de la tâche et la différence entre la formation et l'évaluation. Il y a plusieurs implications pour ceux qui utilisent DriveSharp pour améliorer la sécurité des conducteurs âgés.

Potential age-related differences in the memory processes that underlie visual search are examined in the present study. Using a dynamic, gaze-contingent search paradigm developed to assess memory for previously examined distractors, older adults demonstrated no memory deficit. Surprisingly, older adults made fewer refixations compared to their younger counterparts, indicating better memory for previously inspected objects. This improved memory was not the result of a speed-accuracy trade-off or larger Inhibition-of-Return effects for older than for younger adults. Additional analyses suggested that older adults may derive their benefit from finer spatial encoding of search items. These findings suggest that some of the memory processes that support visual search are relatively age invariant.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether executive dysfunction differentially impacts list-learning and story recall tasks in a sample of older adults referred for suspected cognitive impairment. Older adults (N = 61) with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or probable mild dementia, and those who did not meet criteria for diagnosis of dementia, were assessed using measures of executive function and verbal memory. Two groups were established based on performance on measures of executive function: (a) the No Executive Dysfunction group (NoED; n = 33) consisted of persons without impairment on any obtained measures of executive function; and (b) the Executive Dysfunction group (ED; n = 28) contained persons with impairment on at least one of the measures of executive function. The two groups were compared on performance on two measures of verbal memory, the California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II) and the Logical Memory (LM) subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R). The NoED group performed significantly better than the ED group on the total learning and short delay free recall trials of the CVLT-II. However, there were no significant differences between the groups on the other indices of the CVLT-II (i.e., long delay free recall, recognition, recall repetitions, recall intrusions, or recognition false-positives) or on the immediate and delayed recall trials of the LM measure. These results support previous research demonstrating the impact of executive dysfunction on the acquisition of and short-delay retrieval of verbal information in older adults with suspected cognitive impairment.

The present study examined age differences in trust and reliance of an automated decision aid. In Experiment 1, older and younger participants performed a simple mathematical task concurrent with a simulated medication management task. The decision aid was designed to facilitate medication management, but with varying reliability. Trust, self-confidence and usage of the aid were measured. The results indicated that older adults had greater trust in the aid and were less confident in their performance, but they did not calibrate trust differently than younger adults. In Experiment 2, a variant of the same task was used to investigate whether older adults are subject to over-reliance on the automation. Differences in omission and commission errors were examined. The results indicated that older adults were more reliant on the decision aid and committed more automation-related errors. A signal detection analyses indicated that older adults were less sensitive to automation failures. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence age differences in the use of fallible automation.

The effects of divided attention were examined in younger adults (M = 23 years) and older adults (M = 64 years) who searched for traffic signs in digitized images of traffic scenes. Sign search was executed under single-task and dual-task conditions in scenes containing either small or large amounts of visual clutter. For both age groups, clutter and the secondary task had additive effects on search accuracy, speed, and oculomotor involvement. Compared with the younger adults, older adults were less accurate, especially with high-clutter scenes, were slower to decide that a target sign was not present, and exhibited a marginally greater divided-attention effect on reaction times. They exhibited longer fixations in the divided-attention condition, in which they also showed a disproportionate reduction in recognition memory for the content of the secondary task. Actual or potential applications of this research include methods for evaluating the distraction of conversations and safety implications of conversation on visual search behavior.

An innovative gerontology education program was developed to advance research on aging that is interdisciplinary and promotes the translation of knowledge from lab to life. The program focuses on communication and social interaction in healthy aging. It brings together faculty mentors, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows from six different postsecondary institutions in Canada. The program unifies basic laboratory research in hearing, vision, and cognition with applied research in audiology, biomedical engineering, optometry, psychology, speech-language pathology, human factors, and social work. The design, implementation, and evaluation of the first year of the program are described and future directions are suggested.

Younger and older participants were trained in a triple conjunction visual search task to examine age differences in the development of proficient performance. For the first 8 days, participants searched for a target defined by its contrast polarity, shape, and orientation. On Days 9 through 16, the target identity was switched to one defined by opposing feature values. On Day 17, the target was returned to the original feature values. Results indicated that, after training, younger adults reduced their display size effects more than elderly adults. Disruption occurred after the first but not after the second transfer. However, each time the target was switched, there were no age differences in disruption. Eye movement data suggest that older adults use a similar feature selection strategy as younger adults but may be more susceptible to distraction. The results are discussed in terms of current models of attention and search.

An experiment examined potential age-related differences in priming of pop-out (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994, 1996, 2000; McPeek, Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1999), an implicit, memory-based phenomenon that facilitates repeated gaze or attention shifts between visually similar stimuli. Older and younger adults performed a visual search task requiring them to judge the orientation of a color singleton target. Trial-to-trial repetition of target color and/or target position primed attentional selection for both age groups, producing faster and more accurate responses. Age-related increases in the strength of priming by target color appeared to arise from generalized slowing in older observers’, but marginal age-related increases in the strength of priming by target position remained even after transformation to account for generalized slowing.

Foundational concepts in psychology are introduced to "27% of all full-time students" in postsecondary institutions each year (Scheirer & Rogers, 1985), constituting an annual North American class size of more than one million adults. In part, these numbers reflect the growth in popularity and perceived value of academic psychology since it was made part of university and college curricula. Understandably, teachers of psychology and their professional organizations have expended considerable effort to set the pedagogical goals for this introduction to the topic (e.g., Gilliland, 1932; Goodwin, 1992; Irion, 1976; Sanford, 1910; Wolfle, 1942). Primary among these goals is that of imparting to students academic psychology's orientation, guiding principles, and facts, on the assumption that there is agreement about the conceptual heart of the discipline. The present study is intended to contribute to the identification of the conceptual core of the introductory psychology curriculum.Scrutiny of the introductory textbook is a common strategy for determining core psychology concepts. However, empirical investigations of textbook content are divided on the issue of content consistency. A number of studies employing gross measures of topic coverage (e.g., page counts devoted to a topic) in different texts at a single time point (Griggs, Jackson, & Napolitano, 1994), in the same text over time (Griggs & Jackson, 1996), and in different texts over time (Webb, 1991) give an impression of coherence and stable consensus about the introductory conceptual corpus. Other studies using similar approaches suggest a picture of variation and inconsistency (Harari & Jacobsen, 1984; Weiten, 1988). Efforts at identifying core concepts using more fine-grained analyses of index terms (Boneau, 1990; Quereshi, 1993; Quereshi & Sackett, 1977; Quereshi & Zulli, 1975), glossaries (Boneau, 1990; Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000) or page-by-page content (Landrum, 1993) have led some to see convergence and coherence (Quereshi, 1993) and others to suggest that there is little compelling evidence of a sizeable set of common concepts (Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000).A variety of methodological issues have undoubtedly contributed to the equivocal character of work in this area, including differences in chosen sets of textbooks to study; extraneous sources of content variance in the indices, glossaries, and textbook design; and variation in the criteria used for determining that a concept is common to a number of textbooks. This state of affairs leaves ample room for interpretive disagreement about the extent and nature of consensus about core concepts. Whereas Quereshi (1993) reported that recent texts were "more comprehensive and more similar to each other" (p. 220) than previously examined texts, Zechmeister and Zechmeister (2000) found "evidence for incoherence rather than coherence, instability as opposed to stability..." (p. 6) when they examined Quereshi's (1993) data.The point of departure for the present study is the observation that however lamentably small the number, recent studies (Landrum 1993; Quereshi, 1993; Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000) have nonetheless been able to identify a number of core concepts in the introductory curriculum ranging from as few as 64 (Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000) using a 100% inclusion criteria in 10 books, to 141 in 75% of 52 books (Quereshi, 1993). Landrum's (1993) finding of 126 concepts common to all six texts he reviewed falls in this range. The thrust of our approach is to explore further where in the introductory curriculum consensus about core concepts exists. Using a content analysis approach, we specifically sought to identify which, if any, areas in the introductory curriculum exhibit consensus about core concepts.Two previous studies have examined concepts by topic or area. Quereshi (1993) classified 137 terms found common to 75% of 52 books into four broad areas: biopsychology, clinical psychology, learning and development, and popular psychology. …

The purpose of Study 1a was to determine the criteria that differentiate students who perform well and those who perform poorly on a standardized test of university-level writing. Discriminant function analysis revealed that measures of structure, sentencing, paragraphing, and grammar play the most important role in separating these two groups. These results were used in Study 1b to develop a tutorial attended by an independent group of students preparing to write a standardized writing exam. The intervention had a positive effect on their test performance. Participants reported the tutorial to be useful, committed fewer errors on most of the criteria, and had a higher probability of passing the exam. It was concluded that this type of tutorial is beneficial to students who are preparing for such exams and may have wider educational use for those seeking assistance with their writing skills.

Two experiments examined the disruption of feature-based selection in triple-conjunction search at multiple target transfers. In Experiment 1, after 10 training sessions, a new target possessing previous distractor features was introduced. This produced disruption in RT and fixation number, but no disruption in feature-based selection. Specifically, there was a tendency to fixate objects sharing the target's contrast polarity and shape and this did not change even upon transfer to the new target. In Experiment 2, 30 training sessions were provided with three target transfers. At the first transfer, the results replicated Experiment 1. Subsequent transfers did not produce disruption on any measure. These findings are discussed in terms of strength theory, Guided Search, rule-based approaches to perceptual learning, and the area activation model.

Performance on complex, cognitive tasks often is sensitive to low-level sensory and perceptual factors. These relations are particularly important for cognitive aging researchers because aging is associated with a variety of changes in sensory and perceptual function. In the article that follows, I first selectively outline some relations between task performance and sensory function. Next, I summarize age-related changes in visual function and the implications of these changes for task performance, using the digit-symbol subtest of the WAIS as an example. I offer some reasons why age-related sensory decline may not be important to all cognitive tasks. Finally, I provide several recommendations for cognitive gerontologists who want to minimize the risk that the age differences they observe are sensory in nature. The past decade of cognitive aging research has produced a small, but provocative and influential number of studies that suggest a rather strong correlation between age-related differences in sensory measures like visual acuity and cognitive measures of attention, memory, and intelligence. Understandably, these data are generating an uncertain and mixed reaction within the gerontological community. On the one hand, the possibility of a common or general cause of cognitive aging has parsimonious and clear intellectual appeal. On the other hand, such findings complicate the work of researchers who wish to attribute age differences in task performance to cognitive mechanisms. To motivate the discussion by example, Lindenberger and Baltes (1994) assessed corrected visual acuity and audiometric thresholds, along with several measures of cognitive function (e.g., reasoning) in over 150 people older than 70 years of age. The interrelationships among some of the variables are shown in Figure 1. Aging is strongly correlated with both visual and auditory function, which in turn have a substantial impact on cognition. Such a pattern is consistent with the view that age changes in cognition reflect a common factor that is also indexed by sensory function. However, the data are also compatible with the assertion that age differences in cognition are caused by sensory deficits that make it more difficult for the elderly to process the test materials. In fact, this is the position implicit in the model shown in Figure 1, because age impacts cognition only indirectly through its influence on sensory function. The substantial relations between sensory and cognitive function are not, as might be hypothesized, a result of selecting only an older sample in which undetected disease causes correlated interindividual differences in sensory thresholds and cognitive behaviour. Moderate to large correlations between age, sensation, and cognition have been found in life-span samples (Baltes & Lindenberger, 1997; Salthouse, Hancock, Meinz, & Hambrick, 1996) and in longitudinal designs (Schaie, Maitland, & Willis, 2000). Neither do the correlations result spuriously from age-related changes in response criterion (Burton, Owsley, & Sloane, 1993; Higgins, Jaffe, Caruso, & de Monasterio, 1988). Stevens, Cruz, Marks, and Lakatos (1998) found correlations between forced-choice measures of sensory function and performance on the Boston Picture Naming Test and Logical Memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale ranged from .35 to .78 in small, select groups of younger and older adults. The magnitude of the relationship appears to vary with sensory modality, but not always in ways that allow for easy causal models. For example, Glass (2000) reported that visual contrast sensitivity accounted for more age-related variance in spatial tasks than in verbal tasks. On the other hand, Stevens et al. found that it was touch and taste thresholds that had the highest correlations with the Logical Memory test. The sensory-cognitive link appears to be quite robust, crossing task domains as diverse as problem-solving and fluency (Lindenberger & Baltes, 1994), concept identification (Salthouse et al. …

Three experiments investigated the generalisation of contextual cuing and whether the effect is incidental or intentional in nature. Experiment I assessed contextual cuing across variations in display contrast, homogeneity, and spatial separation. Cuing effects were found with all display types and reaction-time disruption was manifested for repeated displays when consistent configurations had their target locations altered. Recognition memory for repeated displays was at chance levels. Experiment 2 showed that contextual cuing was insensitive to instructions to search for and remember repeated displays. Experiment 2A found that there were no age differences in contextual cuing or effects of intentional instructions, and no memory for repeated displays. Future research questions concern the generalisation of contextual cuing to a wider variety of display conditions and naturalistic tasks.Keywords: contextual cuing, incidental versus intentional processing, cognitive agingVisual search, the process of detecting, localizing, and identifying task-relevant objects embedded within visual environments, is influenced by the physical properties of target items (e.g., Scialfa & Joffe, 1997; Wolfe, 1992), as well as the global configuration of elements within a display (Chun & Jiang, 1998; Chun & Phelps, 1999). Chun and Jiang reported that the spatial layout of a display could be learned unconsciously and facilitated performance when the locations of the target and distractors remained stable over repetitions. The magnitude of this effect, termed contextual culnfi, grew with experience.In the experiments reported in this article, we examined contextual cuing with four objectives. The first was to determine if the effect generalised across differences in low-level stimulus properties, such as contrast and object size, that vary in their demands for focused attention. Second, we examined the disruption in performance following changes to previously consistent display configurations. The third objective was to discern if instructions to intentionally monitor displays for spatial consistency had no effect on performance, as would be expected if contextual cuing is an incidental process. Finally, because older observers are expected to perform as well as their younger counterparts in incidental tasks, we compared younger and older adults' contextual cuing effects.In the first of several contextual cuing studies, Chun and Jiang (1998) had participants search displays that were composed of one target embedded among 11 distractor items. The target (the letter "T") was similar in size and form to the surrounding distractors (the letter ''L''). Trials were divided into blocks, each containing 24 visual search trials. Twelve of these trials were repeated in each block, whereas the remainder were generated randomly and were not repeated. Reaction times decreased as a function of task experience, but, of greater interest, reaction times (RTs) for repeated displays were faster than those for novel displays and the magnitude of this difference increased as participants progressed through the experiment.To determine whether this contextual cuing was caused by regular spatial relationships between the target and the distractors, the location of the target item was then varied within repeated displays. The contextual cuing effect was eradicated, suggesting consistency in relative location as a mechanism mediating faster responses in repeated displays. Subsequent studies (Chun & Phelps, 1999; Olson, Chun, & Allison, 2001) found the contextual cuing effect to be robust and reliable, its magnitude varying between 40 and 150 ms.Further research has established some of the factors influencing contextual cuing. It appears to operate in the absence of eye movements (van Asselen & Castelo-Branco, 2009) and. when arrays of simple objects (e.g., letters and numbers) are used, depends more heavily on local, rather than global, consistency of elements (Hoffmann & Sebald. …

Two experiments used the progressive demasking (PD) task to examine age differences in the ability to inhibit higher frequency competitors during the process of identifying a visually degraded word. In Experiment 1, older adults exhibited a larger inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect (i.e., slower identification of words with many higher frequency competitors) than younger adults, but additional analyses indicated that this difference could be explained by general slowing rather than a deficit in inhibitory abilities. In Experiment 2, a primed version of the PD task was used to promote hypothesis testing by semantically priming the target word (e.g., cry-weep) or a higher frequency competitor of the target (e.g, day-weep) prior to the onset of the demasking sequence. Although older adults were more likely to make identification errors consistent with an inhibitory deficit (e.g., identifying weep as week), these errors were infrequent overall and there was no corresponding evidence of a larger interference effect in the older adults' identification latencies. Taken together, performance in these two tasks provides little evidence of reduced inhibitory functioning in older adults. The implications for the inhibitory deficit hypothesis of cognitive aging and directions for future are discussed.

We analyzed multiple-choice questions provided in test banks for introductory psychology textbooks. In Study 1, we found that about 70% of students responded correctly to a given item, and there was a significant but inconsistent difference in difficulty across chapter topics. In Study 2, a single class of introductory psychology students took comprehensive exams of randomly selected test items that varied in estimated difficulty. As before, chapter topic had a significant, yet inconsistent effect, but test items had several desirable properties compared to Study 1. These data allow several recommendations for instructors who want to improve the characteristics of the multiple-choice exams they use.

In two experiments, younger and older observers carried out feature searches for targets defined by their luminance contrast and orientation. Additionally, they received consistent-mapping (CM) training in luminance contrast by orientation conjunction search, followed by a brief exposure to conjunction search under reversal conditions. In Experiment 1, display size effects on reaction time suggested that both younger and older observers were conducting a parallel search in all conditions and showed equivalent disruption at reversal. Experiment 2 was a substantive replication of the first using more difficult conjunction search displays. In addition to latency, we measured the number, duration, and feature-based selectivity of fixations made during conjunction search. Display size effects were larger than in Experiment 2 and were of equivalent magnitude in younger and older people. There were no age differences in improvement in conjunction search and minimal age differences in disruption following reversal. Both age groups demonstrated early in training that they could select items possessing target features (i.e., the color white), and both age groups demonstrated that they could not completely reverse this selectivity when these features no longer defined the target. These experiments have several implications for models of visual attention and age differences therein.

The effects of visual clutter, luminance, and aging on traffic sign conspicuity were examined in two experiments. Experiment 1a evaluated clutter using subjective judgments from 28 older and younger observers. Participants categorized daytime and nighttime traffic scenes into high or low clutter. Using these categorized scenes, in Experiment 1b a new sample of 28 younger and older participants visually searched for traffic signs. Reaction time and eye movement data were analyzed. Results suggested that aging and clutter affect con-spicuity. Moreover, older adults had poorer performance on target-absent trials. No luminance effect or any age by clutter interactions were obtained. Expertise gained through many years of driving may dampen clutter effects experienced by older adults. The nonlinear relationship between fixation frequency and fixation duration is discussed in relation to similar findings in experimental visual search. Results suggest that age differences found in processing simple visual stimuli may not generalize to more naturalistic scenes.

A training experiment was conducted to investigate age differences in the learning that occurs when ob- servers search for an orientation-defined target among a homogeneous set of distractors (i.e., feature search). Eighteen young (M age = 26 years) and seventeen old (M age = 62 years) participants completed seven practice sessions (3,024 trials), followed by a single session of full reversal. Training involved consistent mapping, varied mapping, or nonsearch, in which a precue predicted the target location with 100% validity. Younger and older observers demonstrated equivalent learning rates and equivalent disrup- tion following reversal in all training conditions. Results are interpreted within models of visual attention and search.

The purpose of this research is to assess interdisciplinary agreement about the content of an introductory course in statistics and research methods. We compiled a set of methodological and statistical topics from relevant research, introductory textbooks, and course descriptions. Eighteen professors in the natural sciences, social sciences, and education assessed the importance of these topics for a hypothetical introductory statistics and research methods course. Results indicate agreement across disciplines on the relative importance of 97% of the statistical topics, with 75% of these topics deemed to be important. In contrast, there is agreement on the relative importance of only 48% of the research methods topics. The results are useful in the evaluation of existing statistics courses and texts. In addition, the data provide support for interdisciplinary introductory statistics instruction but also raise questions regarding the apparent discipline-specific nature of instruction in methodology.

Reaction times (RTs), saccadic eye movements, and fixation durations were measured while older and younger observers searched visual displays for targets defined by a single feature, luminance contrast or orientation, as well as the conjunction of these two features. Target eccentricity was varied between approximately 4 and 14 deg. Age deficits generally increased in the more difficult conditions. the RT data indicated that age deficits were greatest for conjunction search and on target absent trials. the saccade data showed that on target present trials, age deficits were larger for more eccentric targets, especially in conjunction search. Fixation durations were related by a power function to the number of saccades made prior to a correct response. Whereas the exponent of these power functions was constnat across search condition and age group, the coefficient was larger for older adults. Thus at a fixed number of saccades, when old and young were presumably searching groups of equal size, the...

Objectives. The ability to perceive high spatial frequencies (i.e., fine detail) is impaired when contours are placed near the detail to be resolved (Bouma, H. [1970]. Interaction effects in parafoveal letter recognition. Nature, 226, 177-178. doi:10.1038/226177a0; Flom, M. C., Weymouth, F. W., & Kahneman, D. [1963]. Visual resolution and contour interaction. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 53, 1026-1032. doi:10.1364/JOSA.53.001026.). This visual crowding is more pronounced outside of central vision and may be more pronounced in older adults. Thus, the motivation for the present study. Method. Younger (M = 20.95 years) and older adults (M = 70.32 years) detected gap orientation in a Landolt C presented at 3° or 6° either alone or flanked by bars of the same spatial scale. Results. Both age groups demonstrated a visual crowding effect, in that acuity deteriorated in the flanking condition, an effect that grew with eccentricity. Older adults exhibited a larger crowding effect, particularly at 6°. Younger adults tested at reduced illumination did not show the crowding effect of older adults. Thus, age differences do not appear to result from reduced retinal illumination. When the crowding effect was operationalized as the ratio of crowded to uncrowded acuity, age differences were eliminated at both 3° and 6°. Discussion. These data have implications for understanding age differences in functional vision, including reading and visual search. Language: en

Age deficits in visual search often are attributed to difficulties in comparing display items to target representations. In the presence-absence search paradigm, however, these comparisons are frequently confounded with age differences in the latency and velocity of saccadic eye movements, reductions in the useful field of view (FOV), and retention of information concerning previously searched locations. To circumvent these shortcomings, 20 young and 20 older adults were compared in the speed of their same-different judgments of two perifoveal stimuli. The two stimuli were either identical or varied along one or more of the dimensions of size, shape, and color. In both age groups, RT for correct "different" judgments increased with stimulus similarity, an effect which was more pronounced in the elderly subjects. Results suggest that age differences in free search are due, in part, to an age-related decline in the speed of evaluating object congruence.

Young and old observers performed a feature search task in which a single target was embedded in five distractors. Target-distractor similarity was varied quantitatively (along the feature dimension of orientation) and display duration ranged from approximately 50–400 ms. Identification accuracy was worse on target-absent trials, particularly when distractor similarity was high and display duration brief. An age X duration interaction on accuracy was found to reflect generalized age deficits in sensitivity and duration-dependent age differences in bias. Results suggest that an age deficit in the rate of information extraction produces in the elderly a greater dependence on partial information gained from distractors. Additionally, the additive effects of age and similarity have implications for visual search tasks where display size is varied.

Automobile accidents among older adults may be related to difficulties in judging the speed of other vehicles. To examine this possibility, 3 groups of observers in the young adult, middle-aged, and older adult age ranges were asked to estimate the velocity of an isolated automobile traveling at 15-50 mph (24-80 kph). Across all age groups, perceived and actual velocity were related by a power function with an exponent of 1.36. Age was significantly and positively correlated with intercepts, but negatively correlated with exponents; that is, older observers showed less sensitivity to changes in actual velocity. Results bear on the issues of ontogenetic changes in accident involvement and sensitivity to motion.

Age-related differences in web navigation were examined in two experiments, one (N=44) examining search performance and memory for site structure and a second (N=61) investigating search and memory for site content. Participants searched a large website under one of two experimental conditions; a control condition with only basic navigation aids or a condition with more enhanced navigation aids available. In Experiment 1, the enhanced navigation aids were breadcrumbs and a dynamic side-tree (BC-DST), whereas in Experiment 2 only the dynamic side-tree (DST) was available. In Experiment 1, search was more efficient for both age groups in the BC-DST condition. Age differences in search time and recall of the website’s structure could be eliminated by controlling for working memory and processing speed. In Experiment 2, navigation speed improved with practice and there were larger improvements observed for older adults. Navigation tools did not improve performance in either age group. Younger adults had better memory for content than their older counterparts. Contrary to the hypothesis that older adults are more frequently ‘lost’ in their search, age was not associated with the number of pages or repeat pages visited. Future research should focus on alleviating cognitive demands of search in more representative groups of older users.

Palmore's Facts on Aging Quiz (FAQ)‐Part 1 (1977) has been used frequently to gauge a respondent's knowledge of aging. The preponderance of positively‐valenced items on the FAQ, however, is such that score on the test may be more representative of a respondent's attitude toward, than knowledge about aging and the elderly, positive attitudes being associated with a higher FAQ score. Although such confounding of directional bias and knowledge is acceptable in an “edumetric” test, it is problematic in a research instrument. In experiment 1, the FAQ's vulnerability to bias was tested by having young adults complete the FAQ under instructions to adopt either a positive or negative bias toward the elderly, their scores being compared to their own performance when requested to respond neutrally (i.e., on the basis of knowledge alone). Scores on the FAQ were found to be greatly affected by the direction of bias. A new Knowledge of Aging and the Elderly (KAE) questionnaire, patterned after the FAQ but more balance...

Latencies (RT) and eye movement measures were used to examine the effects of age and contrast on the distractor-ratio effect (DRE) in visual search. Younger and older adults performed a contrast x orientation conjunction search task where the ratios of white to black distractors and luminance contrast levels were varied. The distractor-ratio manipulation had similar effects for older and younger adults on both RT and the number of fixations required to find the target. Both measures were largely independent of distractor ratio on target-present trials, while both RTs and the fixation number increased with the number of items sharing the target's contrast polarity on target-absent trials. A more detailed analysis of eye movements suggested that younger adults were a bit more adept at attending to the smaller set of distractors, which presumably facilitated both overt and covert search. Generalized slowing can account for the age differences in RT, but the fixation number data speak to another mechanism, perhaps increased cautiousness on the part of the elderly when signal strength is low.

The influence of age, subject matter knowledge, working memory, reading abilities, spatial abilities, and processing speed on Web navigation was assessed in a sample of 41 participants between the ages of 19 and 83 years. Each participant navigated a stand-alone tourism Web site to find answers to 12 questions. Performance was measured using time per trial, number of pages per trial, and number of revisited pages per trial. Age did not influence the number of total pages or repeat pages visited, which were predicted by domain knowledge, working memory, and processing speed. Age was associated with slower times per trial, and the effect remained significant after controlling for working memory, processing speed, and spatial abilities. Only with the addition of subject matter knowledge and World Wide Web experience was the age effect eliminated. Actual or potential applications of this research include redesigning Web sites to minimize memory demands and enhance visual segmentation. The data also suggest that age differences in Web navigation can be offset partially by taking advantage of older adults' prior experiences in the domain.

The ability to efficiently direct visual attention to salient features in the environment is a critical function of the visual system. The finding that people are slower to detect a target that appears at a previously cued location is thought to reflect a mechanism known as inhibition of return (IOR). Past research has shown that difficult target discriminations result in a greater amount of time needed to inhibit previously attended locations (i.e., a delayed onset of inhibition), suggesting that task difficulty plays a critical role in the allocation of attention. In this study, IOR was measured at a wide range of SOAs while participants detect- ed either a perceptually degraded target or a standard, high luminance target. When responses were made to a percep- tually degraded target, the time course of IOR was delayed by approximately 250 ms (relative to the control group), suggesting that the difficulty in detecting targets also influ- ences the allocation of attention. The results are consistent with the notion that IOR is not simply a reflexive subcortical mechanism but rather involves top-down attentional control settings.

Five experiments were carried out to examine whether top-down processes can aid search, even when targets and distractors are variably mapped. Experiments 1a and 1b determined that effortless VM search can be obtained in Contrast Polarity X Orientation and Color X Orientation conjunction search when one feature dimension remains consistently mapped across blocks. Experiment 2 showed that efficient VM search is possible when both dimensions are variably mapped. In Experiment 3, efficient VM search was found when target-distractor reversals occurred on a trial-wise basis. Experiments 4 and 5 found that VM search deteriorates when target identity is not known prior to display onset. These studies demonstrate the role of top-down mechanisms in the development of efficient VM search and present several challenges to strength-theoretic views on the mechanisms underlying automaticity.

Ten younger and ten older adults were provided with 16 sessions of conjunction search under consistent mapping, where target and distractors remain constant in identity. The target and one distractor were reversed after every fourth session. After the first four training sessions, on target-present trials, display size slopes were near zero for both age groups. However, on target-absent trials, older adults continued to show significantly larger display size effects than younger adults. There were no systematic age differences in either the probability of fixating objects that possess the target's features or in the amount of disruption at any reversal. Thus, although older adults exhibited more conservative criteria in visual search, they developed proficient and flexible search skill to the same degree as their younger counterparts. These data have implications for models of visual attention, skill acquisition, and cognitive aging.

Latency and eye movement measures were used to examine the effects of aging, clutter, and luminance on visual search for traffic signs embedded in digitized images of driving scenes. Initially 14 older and 14 younger observers classified daytime and nighttime traffic scenes as containing low or high amounts of clutter. Next, an independent sample of 14 younger and 14 older participants searched for traffic signs contained within these scenes. Errors were more common among the elderly. Search efficiency declined with increased clutter and with aging. However, relative to the young, older adults did not suffer disproportionately as a result of increased clutter. The methods developed might be profitably employed to assess sign conspicuity and sign acquisition during driving.

Younger and older adults were asked to find a single target in both feature- and conjunction- search conditions. Display size varied between 2 and 8 items, and target-distractor similarity ranged from relatively low to high levels. The accuracy data indicated that older adults had particular difficulty finding targets in high-similarity conjunction-search displays containing a large number of distractors. The reaction time (RT) analyses found larger age deficits in many of these same conditions. For both groups, predictions of conjunction search based on Treisman and Sato's additive model (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1990: 16, 459-478) departed significantly from actual performance. The RT data of older observers were, in large part, predicted as a simple linear function of the young adults' data. These results are discussed with respect to age differences in selective attention, generalized slowing, and an age-related loss in search efficiency.

In four experiments, saccadic eye movements, reaction times (RTs), and accuracy were measured as observers searched for feature or conjunction targets presented at several eccentricities. A conjunction search deficit, evidenced by a large eccentricity effect on RTs, accuracy, and number of saccades, was seen in Experiments 1A and 1B. Experiment 2 indicated that, when saccades were precluded, there was an even larger eccentricity effect for conjunction search targets. In Experiment 3, practice in a conjunction search task allowed both RT and number of saccades to become independent of eccentricity. Additionally, there was evidence of feature-based selectivity in that observers were more likely to fixate distractors that had the same contrast as the target. Results are consistent with the view that the oculomotor and attentional systems are functionally linked and provide constraints for models of visual attention and search.

Older and younger observers searched for two targets embedded in response-compatible or -incompatible distractors. Display duration was varied across trial blocks from 26 to 1,664 ms. For both age groups, response-incompatible displays led to relatively poorer accuracy, particularly at brief durations. Age differences in accuracy were larger for response-incompatible displays and diminished at longer durations, an effect that was also revealed in the latency data. Results are interpreted within a continuous-flow conceptualization of visual processing and are consistent with the hypothesis that older adults are slowed in the feature extraction process that underlies visual search.

Age differences in the useful field of view (UFOV) were examined by asking younger (mean age = 24 years) and older (mean age = 64 years) observers to search for two oriented line targets. These targets were presented at eccentricities ranging from 4 degrees to 14 degrees, and were embedded in either no distractors, homogeneous distractors, or heterogeneous distractors. Eye movements were recorded, along with reaction time (RT) and accuracy. The eye movement data indicated that older observers had more difficulty locating peripheral targets, particularly when they were embedded in heterogeneous distractors. Furthermore, the greater effects of eccentricity and distractor type found in the RT's of older adults were eliminated when age differences in saccade number were partialled out. These findings suggest that age differences in search are largely attributable to factors other than selective attention.

Contemporary research on adult age differences in visual search has tended to ascribe obtained deficits to age-related declines in either the spatial focusing of processing resources or the ability to divide attention across multiple inputs. This chapter presents an alternate view; namely, that the age deficits in search performance may reflect changes occurring at relatively early stages of processing. In the elderly, preretinal image degradation and slower encoding result in a featurally-compromised representation of spatially-extended search arrays. The older observer must therefore make a decision as to target identity or location without sufficient information. In these circumstances, older observers will base their decisions on feature information distributed across the search array. Their performance will be determined by the consistency between features of the distractors and the correct response for a given search trial. Such a model is consistent with the reduced functional field of view in the elderly, and more specifically with data comparing younger and older observers in their ability to identify and localize non-foveal targets embedded in response-compatible and response-incompatible distractors.

Inhibition of return (IOR) occurs when people are slower to detect a target that appeared at a previously cued location. Prior research has shown that younger and older adults display similar amounts of IOR, but this research has not examined the time course of the process. Because elderly people may be slower to engage or disengage spatially based attention, the present experiment examined age differences in IOR at stimulus-onset asynchronies ranging from 50 ms to 3,000 ms. The results show that the peak magnitude of IOR was similar for younger and older adults, but the onset of IOR occurred approximately 300 ms later in elderly persons. Older adults also showed a greater degree of facilitation at shorter stimulus-onset asynchronies. The results suggest that there is a change in the temporal dynamics of inhibition that occurs with age.

Calculated mean scores for older persons utilizing data from previous studies that measured Wechsler Memory Scale performance in healthy samples and compared with those of younger adults and a sample of neurologically impaired aged (N = 384). Statistical analysis indicated that in total raw scores, as well as in all subtest scores but Digit Span, there are significant differences in the performance of different age groups. The degree to which age is associated with subtest performance varies depending on the particular subtest involved. Results are discussed in terms of their clinical implications and current theories of aging and memory.

Foveal and peripheral target detection were compared in young adults (M age = 22 years) and older adults (M age = 66 years) who were optically corrected for the viewing distance. In a two-alternative, forced-choice task, target letters were presented at 0 degree to 10.5 degrees from fixation. Targets were presented alone, flanked on each side by one noise element (i.e., nontarget letter), or embedded in a horizontal row of 19 noise elements. An Age X Noise Level X Location interaction was obtained, wherein age differences were largest for peripheral targets presented in noise. Slope analyses of latency data showed that the performance of young adults in the high-noise condition was most similar to that of older adults in the low-noise condition. At the functional level, results indicated that aging is associated with a restricted useful field of view. In addition, the data suggest that age differences in search can be described by a model in which older adults take smaller perceptual samples from the visual scene and scan these samples more slowly than do the young adults.

Programme utilisant la technique de Johnson-Neyman pour la determination des regions significatives entre deux groupes de donnees