AGING, SKILL, AND KNOWLEDGE USE

虽然已经很好地确定了视觉信息的许多方面 随着年龄的增长，加工表现出下降，重要的是进行 研究，重点是确定相关的机制， 在成年期保持视觉信息处理性能 年 拟议研究的理论框架保持 专家的视觉处理能力取决于有效地使用 领域相关的视觉知识。 建议研究的目的是 研究两种注意机制，搜索效率和启动， 这些被认为是在所选技能中使用视觉知识的基础 域 搜索效率的作用是将注意力集中在关键的 信息和启动机制有助于使关键信息 更清晰、更快速或更完整的编码。 建议在 复杂视觉任务中信息选择的注意需求 是不同的，这取决于观察者的先验域相关 知识 正常的年龄相关的限制应观察到， 不容易提取项目级视觉信息。 但这种 不应对具有专门知识的个人进行限制 包含关键信息的项级单元的知识 所选的域。 这八项拟议的实验旨在 通过比较医疗器械的性能来测试这些预测， 不同年龄的实验室技术人员（年轻、中年、老年 成年人）与匹配的控制范围的领域相关的视觉搜索 任务 拟议研究的刺激材料包括克 染色显微照片作为显示区域，并提供诊断信息 细胞类型和感知上可比较的项目作为目标和探针。 的 拟议的研究预计将表明，年龄较大的熟练科目使用 特定领域的知识，以保持快速/准确的视觉信息 加工性能

Although it is well established that many aspects of visual information processing show decline with advancing age, it is important to conduct research that focuses on identifying the mechanisms associated with preserved visual information processing performance during the adult years. The theoretical framework of the proposed research maintains that expert visual processing performance depends on the efficient use of domain-relevant visual knowledge. The aim of the prop6sed studies is to examine two attentional mechanisms, search efficiency and priming, that are assumed to underlie visual knowledge use in the selected skill domain. Search efficiency acts to confine attention to critical information, and priming mechanisms serve to make critical information more clear, or more quickly or completely encoded. It is suggested that the attentional demands of information selection in complex visual tasks are different, depending on the observer's prior domain-relevant knowledge. Normal age-related limitations should be observed when item-level visual information is not easily extracted. However, such limitations should not be observed for individuals who have specialized knowledge of the item-level units that comprise critical information in the selected domain. The eight proposed experiments are designed to test these predictions by comparing the performance of medical laboratory technologists varying in age (young, middle-aged, older adults) with matched controls on a range of domain-related visual search tasks. Stimulus materials for the proposed studies consist of gram stain photomicrographs as display fields, and diagnostically informative cell types and perceptually comparable items as targets and probes. The proposed research is expected to show that older skilled subjects use domain-specific knowledge to maintain fast/accurate visual information processing performance.