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Age and Skill Differences in the Processing Demands of Visual Inspection
Author(s) -
Dollinger Stephanie M. C.,
Hoyer William J.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(199606)10:3<225::aid-acp376>3.0.co;2-x
Subject(s) - task (project management) , psychology , domain (mathematical analysis) , cognition , audiology , young adult , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , medicine , mathematical analysis , mathematics , management , neuroscience , economics
Abstract Two experiments investigated the effects of age and domain‐specific experience on the speed and accuracy of visual inspection performance. In Experiment 1, young ( M age = 26.5 years) and middle‐aged ( M age = 45.7 years) medical laboratory technologists (MTs) and matched novices were tested on a domain‐specific version and on a domain‐general version of a probe recognition task. Middle‐aged subjects were slower than younger subjects on both versions, and MTs were more accurate but slower than controls on the domain‐specific task. In Experiment 2, MTs and controls were tested on the same tasks under single‐task and dual‐task conditions. Middle‐aged adults were slower and less accurate than young adults under dual‐task conditions in the general version. For the domain‐specific version, the response times and error data suggested that skilled performance is less demanding of age‐limited general‐purpose processing resources.