AGING AND PERFORMANCE OF COGNITIVE AND PERCEPTUAL TASKS

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from Investigator's Abstract): A considerable body of research has examined the changes in cognitive and perceptual processing associated with advancing age. Although previous research has examined age-related performance changes for a wide range of issues (e.g., skill acquisition, memory, attention), one area of research that has received little attention concerns age-related changes in the performance of cognitive and perceptual tasks associated with motion perception. Decrements in cognitive and perceptual processing associated with motion perception would have serious implications in performing a wide range of tasks, including driving. The proposed research will examine this issue by assessing changes in performance of cognitive and perceptual tasks associated with three types of motion perception: object motion, observer motion, and combined object and observer motion. The proposed tasks include a range of skills critical to driving performance, including the identification of collision events, the perception of the direction of observer motion, the identification of surfaces in a scene, and the perceived layout of a scene. Performance of these tasks is likely to be dependent on two factors: limitations in attending to visual information and limitations in the perception of motion. The proposed research will assess changes in attentional and perceptual processing to determine the importance of these factors on performance of object motion, self-motion, and combined object and self-motion tasks. The results of this research could have important implications for understanding a number of issues in aging and performance, including performance issues associated with numerous activities of daily living.