Citation

Korteling JE. Hum. Factors 1991; 33(1): 35-44.

Affiliation

TNO Institute for Perception, Soesterberg, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

2037307

Abstract

Age-related differences in dual-task performance may be affected by factors such as skill integration and perceptual competition. Therefore these factors were examined in a dual-task experiment with young and older adults involving two one-dimensional compensatory tracking tasks. Single-task difficulty was individually adjusted for each subject. It was found that differences in pure dual-task performance between young and older subjects increase when the subtasks are coherent such that skills can be integrated. In addition, the degree to which integration reduces the effects of visual competition was larger for the young than for the older subjects. It is concluded that in dual tasks with coherent subtasks, older adults may show an impaired ability to perform the subtasks in an integrated manner.