Acquisition of message-production skill by younger and older adults: Effects of age, task complexity, and practice

This study investigated the impact of age, task complexity, and practice on adult message-production-skill acquisition and performance. Participants (30 older adults and 30 college students) learned a sequence for describing geometric arrays and then employed this organizing sequence in a series of 90 performance trials. Half of the participants learned a six-step (high task-complexity) sequence, while the remaining participants learned a three-step (low task-complexity) sequence for describing the arrays. The results suggest that overall message-production speed is characterized by a "complexity effect" (i.e., an interaction between age and task complexity such that younger adults exhibited superior performance relative to their older counterparts, and this difference was more pronounced under complex-task conditions). Complexity effects were also found for initial message-production-skill performance and rate of skill acquisition: older adults exhibited slower initial performance and slower rates of skill acquisition than younger adults, and this difference was even more pronounced when learning a complex skill. Finally, the results indicate a significant main effect for age on variation in overall task performance in that older adults learning curves, regardless of task complexity, were characterized by greater variability in performance quality from trial to trial These effects are consistent with changes in processing speed and working-memory capacity that have been suggested to accompany advancing age. The current findings may be seen to have direct implications for older-adult-skills training.