EFFECTS OF FAMILIARITY OF TASK AND CHOICE ON THE FUNCTIONAL PERFORMANCE OF YOUNGER AND OLDER ADULTS

An experiment was conducted to compare the functional performance of y ounger and older adults on familiar and unfamiliar tasks under 2 condi tions of perceived control. Specifically, the relation between age and motor and process skills was examined. The familiar tasks were simple cooking tasks; whereas the unfamiliar tasks were contrived, meaningle ss tasks developed for this study. Younger and older adults did not di ffer in the ratings of the familiarity of the tasks, but results from 2 Age x Task x Choice analyses of variance demonstrated a significant age difference for motor and process skills under all conditions. This suggests that older adults demonstrate age-related decline, even with activities that take motivational, experiential, and ecological valid ity components into account. For the process skills scale, there was a lso a significant main effect for choice. These results support the co ncept that perceived control may improve performance, but not differen tially for older adults; that is, younger and older adults both demons trated improved process performance when given their choice of tasks.