Abstract
A study was conducted to investigate the variation in speed of performance and decision making ability with age. Twenty volunteers from local industry formed the subject group. Ten of these ranged in age from 52 to 63 years. The control group ranged in age from 18 to 29 years. The task performed involved decision making hand movement and positioning elements. Three levels of information load (2, 3 and 4 bits), four distances of move (7“, 10”, 13“ and 16”), and four levels of radial clearance (0.008“, 0.063”, 0.25“ and 0.75”) were taken as independent variables. The dependent variable, performance time, was composed of the decision and movement time components (DT and MT). In addition, heart rate was also monitored.
It was found that age was a significant determinant of performance time (p ≤ .01). The components of performance time, i.e., decision and movement times were both significantly higher for the older subjects as compared to the younger ones (p ≤ .01) reflecting the fact that there is some natural slowing of psychomotor function with age in such combined manual and decision tasks. The information load and the distance of move were significant determinants of decision time and also of movement time (p < 0.01). The clearance was a significant determinant of movement time (p < 0.01). The difference between the older subjects and the younger subjects in decision time increased with an increase in the information load. An analysis of the performance errors for the self paced task indicated that the slowing among the older subjects was not observed at the expense of accuracy. The study provided no evidence that age has an effect on heart rate variability under different levels of information load and task difficulty.
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