AGE AND SKILL IN VISUAL-SEARCH

The effects of age and experience on visual-cognitive performance were examined by administering a domain-relevant visual search task and a standard letter search task to skilled and control subjects at 2 age levels (young and middle-aged adults). In the skilled task, subjects searched for a designated item within 3-item displays using images of bacteria morphology as targets and distractors. Each target was preceded by a word prime representative of bacteria morphology that was valid, invalid, or neutral with respect to the diagnostic characteristics of the target. Skilled subjects showed an age deficit in letter search performance, but the performance of the young and middle-aged skilled subjects was not different on the domain-relevant task. Valid primes produced benefits for the young and middle-aged skilled participants, whereas control subjects were unaffected by the prime manipulation. Results were consistent with the prediction that experience serves to attenuate age-related declines in visual-cognitive performance in the skilled domain.