Date of Award

12-2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Legacy Department

Applied Psychology

Committee Chair/Advisor

Pak, Richard

Committee Member

Gugerty , Leo

Committee Member

Pagano , Christopher

Abstract

Older adults are faced with complex decision tasks that impose high working memory demands. A representative task is choosing a prescription drug plan from a multitude of options that must be evaluated along many factors. The combined effect of the quantity of complex information, and reduced working memory capacity puts older adults at a disadvantage. However, research with younger adults suggests that the working memory burden of decision tasks can be reduced using well-designed, graphical decision aids (i.e., environmental supports). The current study examined the use of environmental supports to support complex decision-making for older adults. Two experiments were conducted; experiment 1 assessed two information visualizations (color and size) on their ability to minimize the working memory demands of the task. Results from experiment 1 suggest that the color information visualization does in fact minimize working memory demand by replacing cognitive comparisons with perceptual comparisons. The second experiment validated the efficacy of the color information visualization in an older adult group. Findings suggest that the use of color to visualize information can successfully ameliorate working memory demand for direct comparisons, but not for complex integration tasks. Finally, the results suggest that information visualizations that rely on perceptual abilities rather than cognitive abilities may help improve older adults' decision making accuracy.

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.