Automation in the Home: The Development of an Appropriate System Representation and its Effects on Reliance

Author(s):  
Julian Sanchez ◽  
Gina Calcaterra ◽  
Quan Q. Tran

To achieve an appropriate level of reliance on an automated system, the operator must have an accurate system representation such that he/she is aware of the capabilities and limitations of the system. The appropriate use of an automated system can lead to optimal performance by the human-machine dyad. This study investigates the relationship between an accurate system representation and behaviors associated with human-automation interaction (e.g., reliance). Furthermore, age-related effects are also included in the investigation. A cooking memory aid (Cook's Collage) is used as an automated aid that keeps track of the ingredients used in a specific recipe. Participants are asked to interact with the automated device for 5 sessions (each on different days). Tasks are structured to simulate those in a real kitchen. Preliminary results suggest that that there is a different pattern of interaction with the aid as a function of age. Older adults tend to rely on the aid for real-time feedback while younger adults use the aid as a verification tool that they have executed the recipe as desired.

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Münster ◽  
Pia Knoeferle

In this review we focus on the close interplay between visual contextual information and real-time language processing. Crucially, we are showing that not only college-aged adults but also children and older adults can profit from visual contextual information for language comprehension. Yet, given age-related biological and experiential changes, children and older adults might not always be able to link visual and linguistic information in the same way and with the same time course as younger adults in real-time language processing. Psycholinguistic research on visually situated real-time language processing in children and even more so older adults is still scarce compared to research in this domain using college-aged participants. In order to gain more comprehensive insights into the interplay between vision and language during real-time processing, we are arguing for a lifespan approach to situated language processing.


2013 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Hennebelle ◽  
Mélanie Plourde ◽  
Raphaël Chouinard-Watkins ◽  
Christian-Alexandre Castellano ◽  
Pascale Barberger-Gateau ◽  
...  

Epidemiological studies fairly convincingly suggest that higher intakes of fatty fish and n-3 fatty acids are associated with reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). DHA in plasma is normally positively associated with DHA intake. However, despite being associated with lower fish and DHA intake, unexpectedly, plasma (or brain) DHA is frequently not lower in AD. This review will highlight some metabolic and physiological factors such as ageing and apoE polymorphism that influence DHA homeostasis. Compared with young adults, blood DHA is often slightly but significantly higher in older adults without any age-related cognitive decline. Higher plasma DHA in older adults could be a sign that their fish or DHA intake is higher. However, our supplementation and carbon-13 tracer studies also show that DHA metabolism, e.g. transit through the plasma, apparent retroconversion and β-oxidation, is altered in healthy older compared with healthy young adults. ApoE4 increases the risk of AD, possibly in part because it too changes DHA homeostasis. Therefore, independent of differences in fish intake, changing DHA homeostasis may tend to obscure the relationship between DHA intake and plasma DHA which, in turn, may contribute to making older adults more susceptible to cognitive decline despite older adults having similar or sometimes higher plasma DHA than in younger adults. In conclusion, recent development of new tools such as isotopically labelled DHA to study DHA metabolism in human subjects highlights some promising avenues to evaluate how and why DHA metabolism changes during ageing and AD.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S531-S531
Author(s):  
Leah N Smith ◽  
Jessica H Helphrey ◽  
Jennifer Sawyer ◽  
Leigh A Fierro ◽  
Ben K Mokhtari ◽  
...  

Abstract Numerous studies have found off-topic verbosity occurs more frequently in older adults than younger adults. Previous theories have attributed this to age-related decline, emotion recognition, and communication style. Previous research has linked lower loneliness with more off-topic verbosity; however, the precise nature of this relationship remains unclear. Loneliness has been defined as an inconsistency between an individual’s actual and desired social relationships, and previous research has found that loneliness is associated with lower cognitive and social outcomes among diverse populations including older adults. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between loneliness and off-topic verbosity among older adults. Healthy, community dwelling older adult participants (N = 82; age 60-99, M = 76.66, SD = 8.52) completed the Three-Item Loneliness Scale and provided a verbal sample in which they recounted an autobiographical memory (a vacation) and a procedural memory (how to make a breakfast); the verbal samples were transcribed and rated by three independent judges. In contrast with previous research, results found that loneliness was associated with a greater tendency to engage in tangential verbal topics. This suggests that social factors such as loneliness may impact the way some older adults express themselves verbally.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Marianne Yee ◽  
Sarah L Adams ◽  
Asad Beck ◽  
Todd Samuel Braver

Motivational incentives play an influential role in value-based decision-making and cognitive control. A compelling hypothesis in the literature suggests that the brain integrates the motivational value of diverse incentives (e.g., motivational integration) into a common currency value signal that influences decision-making and behavior. To investigate whether motivational integration processes change during healthy aging, we tested older (N=44) and younger (N=54) adults in an innovative incentive integration task paradigm that establishes dissociable and additive effects of liquid (e.g., juice, neutral, saltwater) and monetary incentives on cognitive task performance. The results reveal that motivational incentives improve cognitive task performance in both older and younger adults, providing novel evidence demonstrating that age-related cognitive control deficits can be ameliorated with sufficient incentive motivation. Additional analyses revealed clear age-related differences in motivational integration. Younger adult task performance was modulated by both monetary and liquid incentives, whereas monetary reward effects were more gradual in older adults and more strongly impacted by trial-by-trial performance feedback. A surprising discovery was that older adults shifted attention from liquid valence toward monetary reward throughout task performance, but younger adults shifted attention from monetary reward toward integrating both monetary reward and liquid valence by the end of the task, suggesting differential strategic utilization of incentives. Together these data suggest that older adults may have impairments in incentive integration, and employ different motivational strategies to improve cognitive task performance. The findings suggest potential candidate neural mechanisms that may serve as the locus of age-related change, providing targets for future cognitive neuroscience investigations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samina Rahman ◽  
Victoria Kordovski ◽  
Savanna Tierney ◽  
Steven Paul Woods

Objective: Online banking is becoming increasingly common among older adults, whomay experience difficulties effectively navigating this instrumental technology. Thisstudy examined age effects on a performance-based Internet banking task and itsassociation with neurocognitive ability and functional capacity in older and youngeradults. Method: Thirty-five older adults and 50 younger adults completed anexperimenter-controlled online banking measure in which they independentlyperformed a series of naturalistic financial tasks (e.g., account transfers, bill paying).Participants also completed a standardized battery of neuropsychological tests andmeasures of functional capacity. Results: Older adults were markedly slower and lessaccurate in completing the Internet-based banking task, which was not confounded byother demographic, mood, or computer use factors. Higher scores on measures ofneurocognition and financial functional capacity were both strongly associated withhigher Internet-based banking task accuracy scores and quicker completion times inthe older, but not the younger adults. Conclusions: Findings suggest that older adultsexperience difficultly quickly and accurately navigating online banking platforms, whichmay be partly related to age-related declines in neurocognitive functions and basicfinancial capacity. Future studies might examine whether neurocognitive approaches toremediation and compensation can be used to improve online banking capacity inolder adults.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 653-653
Author(s):  
Lizbeth Benson ◽  
Anthony Ong

Abstract Intensive measurements of individuals’ experiences allow for identifying patterns of functioning that may be markers of resilience, and whether such patterns differ across the life span. Using 8 daily diary reports collected in the second burst of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE, n=848, age 34-84; 55%female), we examined whether positive emodiversity (Shannon’s entropy) attenuated the association between cumulative stressor exposure and depressive symptoms, and age-related differences therein. Results indicated age moderated the extent to which positive emodiversity attenuated the association between stress and depressive symptoms (b=0.11, p < .05). The attenuated association was strongest for younger adults with higher positive emodiversity, compared to those with lower positive emodiversity. For older adults, the association between stress and depressive symptoms was relatively similar regardless of their positive emodiversity. Implications pertain to for whom and in what contexts specific types of dynamic emotion experiences may promote optimal functioning and resilience.


2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (7) ◽  
pp. 2127-2136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-Cheng Lin ◽  
Susan L. Whitney ◽  
Patrick J. Loughlin ◽  
Joseph M. Furman ◽  
Mark S. Redfern ◽  
...  

Vibrotactile feedback (VTF) has been shown to improve balance performance in healthy people and people with vestibular disorders in a single-task experimental condition. It is unclear how age-related changes in balance affect the ability to use VTF and if there are different attentional requirements for old and young adults when using VTF. Twenty younger and 20 older subjects participated in this two-visit study to examine the effect of age, VTF, sensory condition, cognitive task, duration of time, and visit on postural and cognitive performance. Postural performance outcome measures included root mean square of center of pressure (COP) and trunk tilt, and cognitive performance was assessed using the reaction time (RT) from an auditory choice RT task. The results showed that compared with younger adults, older adults had an increase in COP in fixed platform conditions when using VTF, although they were able to reduce COP during sway-referenced platform conditions. Older adults also did not benefit fully from using VTF in their first session. The RTs for the secondary cognitive tasks increased significantly while using the VTF in both younger and older adults. Older adults had a larger increase compared with younger adults, suggesting that greater attentional demands were required in older adults when using VTF information. Future training protocols for VTF should take into consideration the effect of aging.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Leigh Seaman ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen ◽  
Katherine Senn ◽  
Jessica Cooper ◽  
Brittany Shane Cassidy

Trust is a key component of social interaction. Older adults, however, often exhibit excessive trust relative to younger adults. One explanation is that older adults may learn to trust differently than younger adults. Here, we examine how younger (N=33) and older adults (N=30) learn to trust over time. Participants completed a classic iterative trust game with three partners. Younger and older adults shared similar amounts but differed in how they shared money. Compared to younger adults, older adults invested more with untrustworthy partners and less with trustworthy partners. As a group, older adults displayed less learning than younger adults. However, computational modeling shows that this is because older adults are more likely to forget what they have learned over time. Model-based fMRI analyses revealed several age-related differences in neural processing. Younger adults showed prediction error signals in social processing areas while older adults showed over-recruitment of several cortical areas. Collectively, these findings suggest that older adults attend to and learn from social cues differently from younger adults.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khushi Patel

Cross-cultural research suggests that individualistic Americans have a tendency to process focal objects; in contrast, collectivist Asians have a tendency to bind objects and context (Park & Huang, 2010). However, little is known whether the reported cultural differences are moderated by cultural orientation. In light of these results and the well-reported age-related decline in binding abilities, the current study examined cultural and age differences in cultural orientation, spatial memory and strategy use with young and older Canadian and Indian adults. There was little difference between Canadian and Indian participants’ cultural orientation. While cultural orientation did not moderate the relationship between culture and spatial memory, spatial memory and strategy use differed as a function of age. The use of context-specific strategies resulted in performance gains in older adults, however overall older adults had poor spatial memory, with Indian older adults scoring significantly lower than Canadian older adults on the courtyard task.


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