Attention performance in elderly people in complex visual environment
Journal
Bridging Research and Good Practices towards Patient Welfare - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on HealthCare Systems Ergonomics and Patient Safety, HEPS 2014
ISBN
9781138027169
Date Issued
2015-01-01
Author(s)
Menozzi, M.
Abstract
The aging workforce has become a trend as well as a challenge in our modern lives. With such changes we may expect some unavoidably reduced performance in elderly people. To minimize the impact on the outcome also to keep theworking life quality, it is important to provide a proper and comfortable working environment for the aging workforce considering the actual status of the performance ability. In this study we aim to investigate the potential effects on the attention performance in elderly people when being exposed to a complex visual environment. Attention performance has been examined in a video-based task that required participants to attend to visual information under various background complexity levels. Experimental results have shown that elder participants performed the attention task with a reduced performance than the younger ones. Besides, the elder group seemed to shift their attention resources to process information located in the central visual field when a more complex environment was presented. Elderly people not only reduce their attention performance in general, but also change their strategies for acquiring information under heavy mental load.As a result, a simpler visual environment should be considered for the elderly workforce especially when the task is more crucial.
Type
conference paper