AGE, COOPERATIVE VS LECTURE TRAINING, AND GROUP COMPOSITION - SOME PRELIMINARY FINDINGS OF EFFECTS ON PERFORMANCE

18 younger (under 25 years) and 18 older (over 39 years) undergraduate women were trained in problem-solving by either a cooperative or trad itional lecture technique and in age-consistent, i.e., younger or olde r participants only, or mixed age, i.e., younger and older participant s, groups. Analysis indicated that older subjects did not score as wel l on the problem-solving task (48.3 vs 43.9) where lower scores indica te better performance, particularly in mixed-age groups (58.2 vs 44.3) ; older subjects completed the task more quickly (349 sec. vs 466 sec. ), age-consistent groups completed the task equally quickly regardless of training; and age-inconsistent groups completed the task more quic kly when cooperatively trained (183 sec. vs 390 sec.).