Workload Capacity Across the Visual Field in Young and Older Adults

The Resource Workload Capacity Across the Visual Field in Young and Older Adults

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Workload Capacity Across the Visual Field in Young and Older Adults

Summary

Older adults often perform more poorly than young adults on measures of the functional field of view (FFOV), the area of the visual field from which task-relevant information can be extracted without head or eye movements. To test whether differences in parallel processing efficiency explain age-related changes in the FFOV, the current work measured the workload capacity coefficient, C(t)OR (Townsend and Nozawa, 1995), for targets appearing at various retinal eccentricities in young and older adults. Derived from analysis of response time distributions, C(t)OR gauges the efficiency with which observers process multiple items simultaneously relative to the rate at which they process items individually. Subjects performed a speeded target identification task, with targets appearing at varying retinal eccentricities and in the presence or absence of visual clutter. Contrary to expectations, both age groups showed higher levels of workload capacity in cluttered displays and at larger values of target eccentricity. Additionally, despite pronounced differences between age groups in RTs and error rates, older adults showed C(t)OR values similar to or higher than those of young adults across the visual field. Results suggest that age-related changes in the profile of the FFOV do not reflect inefficient parallel processing, but are more likely the result of visual crowding or generalized cognitive slowing in older adults

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Context of Workload Capacity Across the Visual Field in Young and Older Adults

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