title: Age, skill, and contextual cuing in target detection.
abstract: This study examined the extent to which structural regularities inherent in visual arrays help to guide target detection and reduce age-related differences in skilled visual search performance. The target-detection performance of medical laboratory technologists in 2 age groups (M = 24.3 years and M = 49.0 years) and age-matched novices was assessed using images of bacterial morphology taken from Gram's stain photomicrographs as targets and search arrays. For skilled observers, response times were longer for middle-aged adults than for young adults except when external location cues were available, or when contextual cues inherent in the array were available to guide target detection. These results demonstrate that contextual information aids the skilled search of middle-aged experts, and suggest that contextual cuing is 1 means by which middle-aged adults can circumvent the effects of normally age-deficient processes on performance in a skilled domain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Syracuse University, New York 13244-2340, USA. wjhoyer@mailbox.syr.edu
authors.forename: William J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Hoyer
authors.forename: Dora
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ingolfsdottir
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D001076:Aptitude; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology