TASK STRATEGIES, AGING AND SKILL ACQUISITION

描述(改编自调查人员摘要)：老年人获得了新的 与年轻人相比，他们的技能发展得更慢、更不成功。为什么？一 得到最少经验关注的可能性是年龄较大的 成年人处理任务的方法(即他们的策略)可能不同于 年轻人的。初步研究表明，老年人确实会收养 不同的任务策略，这样的策略差异确实中介了年龄相关 老年人在技能获得和策略使用上的差异可能是 受任务结构的影响。这项拟议的研究旨在 回答以下问题：(1)老年人在什么时候使用不同的 技能习得任务中的策略？(2)是什么机制 基础差异化策略使用？(3)老年人的策略选择 顺应变化，还是受到认知和速度的严格限制 能力？(4)培训和任务结构能否设计成支持老年人 成年人使用最优策略？(5)策略差异如何 纳入与年龄相关的技能差异的一般理论 收购？提出了12个实验来研究策略问题。 对于年轻人和老年人的一系列技能，包括感知 学习、基于记忆的联想学习以及更复杂的技能，如 学习使用自动柜员机和学习逻辑 决定。拟议的工作包括三个实验系列，以 系统地追求识别和理解与年龄相关的目标 在策略选择、策略使用、策略调整等方面存在差异。 首先，将确定先前做法的成本和收益，以评估 非特异性迁移对技能习得的影响。第二，实践 日程安排将决定应如何组织任务培训 促进使用有效的学习策略。第三， 将评估战略选择的灵活性，目标是 确定导致最佳战略选择的任务组件。这个 建议的研究结果将为模型提供基本的经验数据 在技能习得和实践方面的年龄差异 关于如何以及何时可以最大限度地减少与年龄有关的差异的信息 通过任务设计或适当的培训。

DESCRIPTION (adapted from investigator's abstract): Older adults acquire new skills more slowly and less successfully than young adults. Why? One possibility that has received minimal empirical attention is that older adults' approach to the task (i.e., their strategy) may be different from young adults'. Preliminary research suggests that older adults do adopt different task strategies, such strategy differences do mediate age-related differences in skill acquisition, and the strategy use of older adults can be influenced by the structure of the task. The proposed research is designed to answer the following questions: (1) When do older adults use different strategies in skill acquisition tasks? (2) What are the mechanisms that underlie differential strategy use? (3) Is strategy selection of older adults amenable to change, or is it strictly limited by cognitive and speed abilities? (4) Can training and task structure be designed to enable older adults to use the optimal strategy? (5) How can strategy differences be incorporated into a general theory of age-related differences in skill acquisition? Twelve experiments are proposed to investigate strategy issues for young and older adults for a range of skills including perceptual learning, memory-based associative learning, and more complex skills such as learning to use an automatic teller machine and learning to make logic decisions. The proposed effort consists of three experimental series to systematically pursue the goals of identifying and understanding age-related differences in strategy selection, strategy use, and strategy adjustment. First, the costs and benefits of prior practice will be determined to assess the influence of nonspecific transfer on skill acquisition. Second, practice schedule manipulations will determine how task training should be structured to facilitate use of efficient strategies for learning. Third, the flexibility of strategy selection will be assessed with the goal of identifying the task components that lead to optimal strategy choice. The results of the proposed research will yield basic empirical data for a model of age-related differences in skill acquisition as well as practical information about how and when such age-related differences can be minimized through task design or appropriate training.