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Human Factors and Aging: Identifying and Compensating for Age-related Deficits in Sensory and Cognitive Function

Introduction Human factors is an interdisciplinary field organized around the central endeavor of fitting the designed environment to the individual. The process of achieving optimal person-environment interaction requires knowledge about the broad range of human functional capacity; including-but not limited to-anthropometry, biomechanics, sensory processes and cognitive psychology. It has been said that "theory and practice are the same in theory but different in practice". Nowhere is this predicament more true than in the field of human factors. Although primarily regarded as an applied field of science, those who practice human factors on a daily basis must rely heavily upon theory and principles generated through basic research. This reliance upon sound theoretical constructs is made necessary by the fact that design solutions to person-environment interface problems rarely generalize across situations. Rather, it is the theoretical constructs that explain human behavior and the principles they generate that are transferable across design domains. Thus, human factors as a practice is intimately bound to its theoretical principles. Practice cannot proceed without theory. This chapter attempts to provide the reader with a introduction to the theoretical principles of experimental psychology as they relate to the more specific domain of aging and technology. This survey is limited in its scope in so far as it pertains only to the area of cognitive psychology. As such, it explores the age-related changes in sensory processes, attention and memory that present challenges to an older person's ability to 2 interact with his or her environment. Some opportunities for applying this knowledge toward the optimization of the person-environment interface are presented. Hopefully, the basic research findings and principles reviewed herein-and the accompanying examples and recommendations for improving functional capacity-will inspire the reader to generate innovative approaches toward designing a better fit between the designed environment and persons of all ages. The maximum diameter of the pupil declines with advancing adult age (a condition known as senile miosis). Under low light conditions, the resting diameter of the pupil falls from 7 mm at age 20 to approximately 4 mm at 80 years of age (Lowenfeld, 1979). Although senile miosis reduces the amount of light reaching the retina, there is reason to suspect that smaller pupil diameters may actually benefit visual performance in older adults in many situations by increasing the contrast of the retinal image (see Sloane, Owlsey & Alvarez, 1988). The crystalline lens of the eye becomes increasingly opaque as …