As we grow older, we may grow wiser, but we can also experience memory loss and cognitive slowing that can interfere with our daily routines. The cognitive neuroscience of human ageing, which relies largely on neuroimaging techniques, relates these cognitive changes to their neural substrates, including structural and functional changes in the prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe regions and white matter tracts. Much remains unknown about how normal ageing affects the neural basis of cognition, but recent research on individual differences in the trajectory of ageing effects is helping to distinguish normal from pathological origins of age-related cognitive changes.

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Insights into the ageing mind: a view from cognitive neuroscience.

Counter to the common belief that expert performance reflects innate abilities and capacities, recent research in different domains of expertise has shown that expert performance is predominantly mediated by acquired complex skills and physiological adaptations. For elite performers, supervised practice starts at very young ages and is maintained at high daily levels for more than a decade. The effects of extended deliberate practice are more far-reaching than is commonly believed. Performers can acquire skills that circumvent basic limits on working memory capacity and sequential processing. Deliberate practice can also lead to anatomical changes resulting from adaptations to intense physical activity. The study of expert performance has important implications for our understanding of the structure and limits of human adaptation and optimal learning.

http://www.chrest.info/Fribourg_Cours_Expertise/Articles-www/III%20Theories/ericsson_charness.pdf

Expert performance: Its structure and acquisition.

The successful adoption of technology is becoming increasingly important to functional independence. The present article reports findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) on the use of technology among communitydwelling adults. The sample included 1,204 individuals ranging in age from 18–91 years. All participants completed a battery that included measures of demographic characteristics, self-rated health, experience with technology, attitudes toward computers, and component cognitive abilities. Findings indicate that the older adults were less likely than younger adults to use technology in general, computers, and the World Wide Web. The results also indicate that computer anxiety, fluid intelligence, and crystallized intelligence were important predictors of the use of technology. The relationship between age and adoption of technology was mediated by cognitive abilities, computer self-efficacy, and computer anxiety. These findings are discussed in terms of training strategies to promote technology adoption.

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Factors Predicting the Use of Technology: Findings From the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE)

Previous reviews of the literature on the relationship between age and job performance have largely focused on core task performance but have paid much less attention to other job behaviors that also contribute to productivity. The current study provides an expanded meta-analysis on the relationship between age and job performance that includes 10 dimensions of job performance: core task performance, creativity, performance in training programs, organizational citizenship behaviors, safety performance, general counterproductive work behaviors, workplace aggression, on-the-job substance use, tardiness, and absenteeism. Results show that although age was largely unrelated to core task performance, creativity, and performance in training programs, it demonstrated stronger relationships with the other 7 performance dimensions. Results also highlight that the relationships of age with core task performance and with counterproductive work behaviors are curvilinear in nature and that several sample characteristics and data collection characteristics moderate age-performance relationships. The article concludes with a discussion of key research design issues that may further knowledge about the age-performance relationship in the future.

The relationship of age to ten dimensions of job performance.

OBJECTIVE\nThe objective of this NIH Consensus Statement is to inform the biomedical research and clinical practice communities of the results of the NIH Consensus Development Conference on Rehabilitation of Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury. The statement provides state-of-the-art information regarding effective rehabilitation measures for persons who have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and presents the conclusions and recommendations of the consensus panel regarding these issues. In addition, the statement identifies those areas that deserve further investigation. Upon completion of this educational activity, the reader should possess a clear working clinical knowledge of the state of the art regarding this topic. The target audience for this statement includes, but is not limited to, pediatricians, family practitioners, internists, neurologists, physiatrists, psychologists, and behavioral medicine specialists.\n\n\nPARTICIPANTS\nParticipants were a non-Federal, nonadvocate, 16-member panel representing the fields of neuropsychology, neurology, psychiatry, behavioral medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, speech and hearing, occupational therapy, nursing, epidemiology, biostatistics and the public. In addition, 23 experts from these same fields presented data to the panel and a conference audience of 883.\n\n\nEVIDENCE\nThe literature was searched through Medline and an extensive bibliography of references was provided to the panel and the conference audience. Experts prepared abstracts with relevant citations from the literature. A compendium of evidence was prepared by the panel which included a contribution from a patient with TBI, a report from an Evidence Based Practice Center of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, and a report from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Scientific evidence was given precedence over clinical anecdotal experience.\n\n\nCONSENSUS PROCESS\nThe panel, answering predefined questions, developed their conclusions based on the scientific evidence presented in open forum and the scientific literature. The panel composed a draft statement that was read in its entirety and circulated to the experts and the audience for comment. Thereafter, the panel resolved conflicting recommendations and released a revised statement at the end of the conference. The panel finalized the revisions within a few weeks after the conference. The draft statement was made available on the World Wide Web immediately following its release at the conference and was updated with the panel's final revisions.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nTraumatic Brain Injury (TBI) results principally from vehicular incidents, falls, acts of violence, and sports injuries, and is more than twice as likely in males as in females. The estimated incidence rate is 100 per 100,000 persons with 52,000 annual deaths. The highest incidence is among persons 15 to 24 years of age and 75 years and older, with an additional less striking peak in incidence in children ages 5 and younger. Since TBI may result in lifelong impairment of an individual's physical, cognitive, and psychosocial functioning and prevalence is estimated to be 2.5 million to 6.5 million individuals, TBI is a disorder of major public health significance. Furthermore, mild TBI is significantly under diagnosed and the likely societal burden therefore even greater. Given the large toll of TBI and absence of a cure, prevention is of paramount importance. However, the focus of this conference was the evaluation of rehabilitative measures available for the cognitive and behavioral consequences of TBI. Although studies are relatively limited, available evidence supports the use of certain cognitive and behavioral rehabilitation strategies for individuals with TBI. This research needs to be replicated in larger, more definitive clinical trials. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)

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Rehabilitation of persons with traumatic brain injury

Novice (Experiment 1) and experienced (Experiment 2) young, middle-aged, and older adults learned a new word-processing application in keystrokes, menus, or menus-plus-icons interface conditions. Novices showed strong age differences in the time to complete the 3-day tutorial and in declarative and procedural tests of word-processing knowledge. Menus and menus-plus-icons were superior to keystrokes condition. though interface did not interact with age. Experienced users showed age-related slowing in learning rate but minimal age differences in test performance when retrained on a new word-processing program. Age and computer experience accounted for much of the variance in both learning time and word-processing performance; interface type, speed of processing, and spatial generation ability made additional contributions. Experience interacted with age to predict performance. Implications for training and retraining older workers are discussed.

Word-processing training and retraining: effects of adult age, experience, and interface.

Eighty typists ranging in age from 21-71 years and in skill from 24-110 net words per minute participated in 2 experiments examining age-related differences in the motoric aspects of transcription typing skill. Age- and skill-related differences were examined for 2 simplified typing tasks: letter reaction time, which assessed latency to type a single keystroke, and digraph typing, which assessed the latencies to type 2 consecutive keystrokes. A finger tapping and choice reaction time task were also included. The results indicated that low-skill, older typists exhibited a deficit in both the translation and the execution components of motor performance, whereas high-skill, older typists exhibited a deficit in translation only. An additional task that manipulated preview of the text to be typed replicated the findings of Salthouse (1984), suggesting that older typists compensate for age-related slowing by beginning keystroke preparation sooner.

Age-related differences in the motoric aspects of transcription typing skill.

In this study we discussed conceptual issues regarding the definition of variability and investigated age-related differences in variability of performance. The following types of variability were ...

Aging and Variability in Performance

Twenty Six – Human Factors and Design for Older Adults

The disinhibition hypothesis advanced by Hasher and Zacks (1988) predicts a faulty inhibitory mechanism resulting in “increased breadth of activation of nongoal path ideas” with aging (p. 213, Fig. 1). to assess this prediction, we tested young and older adults with a modified Stroop paradigm in which the semantic relationship between the words and ink colors was varied. Items were presented in five conditions: Stroop words (BLUE), related color words (NAVY), related words (SKY), neutral words (REFER), and asterisks (∗∗∗). We found an age difference in interference for the Stroop words only; that is, when the response set was the same as the stimulus set, older adults' color-naming performance was jeopardized. In contrast, young and older adults did not differ in proportional slowing when related colors, related words, neutral words, or asterisks were presented. the findings are discussed in terms of three explanations: (a) a developmental dissociation between response suppression and semantic su...

Elizabeth A. Bosman

Papers

Word-processing training and retraining: effects of adult age, experience, and interface.

Age-related differences in the motoric aspects of transcription typing skill.

Aging and Variability in Performance

Twenty Six – Human Factors and Design for Older Adults

Age differences in stroop-like interference as a function of semantic relatedness