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Biomedical subjects

A A Hartley

Publications and source records attributed to A A Hartley.

26 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1983

Meaningfulness and problem-solving performance by younger and older adults.

Younger and older adults solved reasoning problems in either abstract or meaningful form. Contrary to expectation, older adults did not differ on the two versions, but younger adults were aided by meaningfulness. Results of a second task showed no age differences in the time to produce associations to problem elements or in the number of associations. There were differences in the quality of associations, and association quality was significantly related to performance on the reasoning problems for older adults.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Task complexity and problem-solving performance in younger and older adults.

In problems resembling the Twenty Questions game, older and younger adults were asked to discover the square or squares the experimenter had in mind from an array of squares. Complexity was varied in three conditions in which problems had 6, 8, or 12 bits of information. Task demands were increased in a fourth condition by imposing a 60-sec time limit. Contrary to a hypothesis drawn from prior results, no evidence was found that older adults select more efficient strategies as task complexity or demands increase. Both age groups maintained the same strategies; the less efficient strategies selected by the older persons were reduced in effectiveness as task complexity increased.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Task complexity, problem representation, and problem-solving performance by younger and older adults.

To test the hypothesis that increased task difficulty elicits more efficient problem-solving strategies from older adults, younger and older persons were given Twenty Questions tasks with either 64 or 10,000 possible solutions and with the possible solutions either physically present or not. Although younger adults were more efficient than older adults, there was no evidence that task difficulty affected problem solving for either age group.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Mental measurement of line length: the role of the standard.

Reaction times were examined for magnitude estimates of line length. In the first two experiments, reaction times increased linearly with judged length. This result is consistent with the hypothesis the judgments are made by laying off a mental image of the standard along the line to be judged. The slope of the function relating judged length to reaction time was not affected by the length of the standard line, suggesting that the rate at which the image of the standard is laid off is not a function of the length of the standard. Reaction time also increased linearly with judged length when subjects judged line length when the standard of 1 in. was suggested but not provided as well as when no standard was suggested. The hypothesized laying-off process was compared to other cognitive manipulations, such as mental rotation and size scaling. Equivalence of judgments based on the representation of the standard in perceptual memory and in imagination is discussed.

Discrimination Learning↗
PubMed1981

Adult age differences in deductive reasoning processes.

To explore deductive inference processes on concept learning a problem was given to individuals from four groups: younger adults (mean age 20.0 years), middle-aged adults (41.4 years), and two groups of older adults (65.4 and 71.5 years). The first three groups were college students or college graduates; the last group was drawn from the local community. Likelihood of solution was lower in the older groups; the two older groups did not differ, not did the younger and middle-aged groups. Analyses of hypotheses generated during the task showed that those who failed to solve the problem, whatever their age, overlooked evidence that a dimension as relevant (but only when attention had not been drawn previously to that dimension) and failed to respond appropriately when a dimension was shown to be irrelevant.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Rotation of mental images by young and old college students: the effects of familiarity.

Younger and older college students judged whether letters, rotated from 0 to 180 degrees away from normal, upright position, were standard letters or mirror-images of standard letters. The analysis separated basic speed of response from the rate at which mental manipulations of the images of the letters took place. With letters from the English alphabet, younger (mean age, 21.6 years) and older (mean age 55.9 years) sugjects did not differ either in basic speed or in rate of manipulation. With unfamiliar, lower-case Greek letters, however, the basic speed of older subjects (mean age, 56.5 years) was slower than that of younger subjects (mean age, 21.2 years) while there was no difference in rate of manipulation. The results are inconsistent with an hypothesis of general slowing of central nervous system activity.

Adolescent↗