Age-Related Differences in Positional Dispersion of Fixations in a Multitask Environment

Abstract

The present study focused on identifying eye-tracking measures that can provide insight into the nature of age-related differences in multitasking abilities. While participating in a multitask paradigm, participants’ eye-movements, performance data, and subjective information were collected. An investigation of the nature of eye movements between younger (18-25 years of age) and older (50-65 years of age) adults revealed that while no differences between fixation counts or fixation durations were observed, the dispersion of fixations was significantly different. Specifically, the fixations of younger adults were more diffuse than those of older adults, whose fixations were significantly more concentrated on the screen. In addition, performance differences between the two age groups were observed, with younger adults performing significantly better than older adults. These results demonstrate that unobtrusive psychophysiological measures can be observed in conjunction with the age-related performance differences observed in multitask environments, which may provide insight as to the exact nature of these performance differences.