Age Differences in Everyday Problem Solving: The Role of Problem Context

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy J. L. Thornton ◽  
Theone Paterson ◽  
Sophie Yeung ◽  
Jessica Kubik
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Problem Context ◽  
Everyday Problem Solving ◽  
Everyday Problem

Age and Experiential Differences in Strategy Generation and Information Requests for Solving Everyday Problems

1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia A. Berg ◽  
Sean P. Meegan ◽  
Paul Klaczynski
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Everyday Problem Solving ◽  
Everyday Problem ◽  
Everyday Problems ◽  
Information Requests

The role of experience in understanding age differences in strategy generation and information requests for solving everyday problems was explored in young and older adults. Participants received three hypothetical problems dealing with going to doctor’s offices and going to dinner parties and were probed extensively for their strategies and information they would like to solve the problems. Experience with these two domains was assessed by participants’ reports of their experience, script knowledge, and the presence of experience in problem definitions. No age differences were found in these experience measures. Age differences were found in the number of strategies generated and the amount of information requested to solve the problem. Two patterns of everyday problem solving were uncovered: an exhaustive style (involving inferential problem definition, elaborate strategy generation, and information requests); and an experiential style (involving experiential problem definition, less strategy generation, and fewer information requests). The results are interpreted within a model that uses individuals’ problem definitions to understand multiple aspects of everyday problem-solving performance.

Contexts, functions, forms, and processes of collaborative everyday problem solving in older adulthood

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean P. Meegan ◽  
Cynthia A. Berg
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Educational Psychology ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Older Adulthood ◽  
Sociocultural Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Everyday Problem Solving ◽  
Everyday Problem

The present paper reviews the extant literature on collaborative everyday problem solving in older adulthood and explicates the contexts, functions, forms, and processes of collaboration in daily life. In this review, we examine collaboration as it occurs in the daily lives of older adults in addition to the specified intelligence-like tasks more typical of the current literature. Drawing from multiple literatures that have examined collaboration, including sociocultural perspectives within child development, life-span cognition, educational psychology, and social psychology, we illuminate the changing contexts of collaboration across the life span and examine the role of potential collaborators, the multiplicity of forms and functions of collaboration, and the social processes that may facilitate or hinder collaborative performance.

Age differences in everyday problem solving

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Loken Thornton ◽  
Theone S. E. Paterson ◽  
Sophie E. Yeung
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Older Age ◽  
Relative Performance ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Problem Context ◽  
Everyday Problem Solving ◽  
Everyday Problem ◽  
Middle Aged Adults ◽  
The Impact

Reductions in everyday problem solving (EPS) are often reported in older age, although it has been suggested that problem context may modify this effect. We evaluated the impact of two aspects of problem context: age appropriateness (age-neutral vs. older-age content) and problem type (interpersonal vs. practical) on EPS performance in 175 adults aged 18–87. Older adults generated fewer solutions to ill-structured EPS vignettes than younger and middle-aged adults. Middle-aged adults demonstrated an advantage on practical problems. While all age groups demonstrated a relative performance advantage for interpersonal content on older age problems, older adults showed the least relative benefit in this condition. Thus older adults do not exhibit relative performance gains on EPS problems designed to be most salient and relevant to this age group.

The Role of Supportive Messages and Distracting Thoughts on Everyday Problem-Solving Performance

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 537-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher J. Kimbler ◽  
Jennifer A. Margrett ◽  
Tara L. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Everyday Problem Solving ◽  
Everyday Problem ◽  
Supportive Messages
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