THE EFFECTS OF AGE, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND TASK VARIABLES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF PROCEDURAL ASSEMBLY TASKS

Older adults may be disadvantaged in the performance of procedural ass embly tasks because of age-related declines in working memory operatio ns. It was hypothesized that adding illustrations to instructional tex t may lessen age-related performance differences by minimizing process ing demands on working memory in the elderly In the present study, you nger and older adults constructed a series of 3-dimensional objects fr om 3 types of instructions (text only, illustration only, or text and illustrations). Results indicated that instructions consisting of text and illustrations reduced errors in construction for both age groups compared with the other formats. Younger adults, however, outperformed older adults under all instructional format conditions. Measures of s patial and verbal working memory and text comprehension ability accoun ted for substantial age-related variance across the different format c onditions but did not fully account for the age differences observed.