AGE-RELATED DIFFERENCES IN ADULTS SPATIAL TASK-PERFORMANCE - INFLUENCES OF TASK COMPLEXITY AND PERCEPTUAL SPEED

It was predicted that the magnitude of age differences in performance of a figure comparison task would increase as a function of task complexity, which was manipulated by varying the angular disparity between figural stimuli to be compared and by varying the number of line segments comprising those stimuli. It was further reasoned that if the anticipated effect was due primarily to age-related decline in perceptual speed, then a measure of perceptual speed would account for the majority of age related variance in task performance. Findings supported the age-complexity hypothesis, but included the effect of sex and response criteria. Despite the fact that perceptual speed was a significant predictor of task performance for men, it did not account for a great deal of age-related variance in women's performance. Other results indicated that (a) subjects' performance in responding to ''same'' and ''different'' stimulus pairs varied as a function of angular disparity between figures, and (b) sex differences were more pervasive for elderly adults than for young and middle-aged adults.