Instructional compensation for age-related cognitive declines: Effects of goal specificity in maze learning

The differential effects of goal specificity on maze learning among 40 youn g adults and 40 old adults were investigated. Participants had to navigate through a computerized training-maze task. The finish point of the maze cou ld be presented either as a specific location or in more general terms. Aft er solving the maze problem, participants were required to solve the same p roblem again, either by moving from start to finish or backward from finish to start. The hypotheses that the presence or absence of a specific goal w ould disproportionately compromise or enhance, respectively, elderly people 's performance were confirmed. Although young adults outperformed old parti cipants in all conditions, these differences were much smaller in the nonsp ecific goal conditions, These results suggest that instruction based on cog nitive load theory (J. Sweller, J.J.G. Van Merrienboer, & F. Paas, 1998) ca n compensate for age-related cognitive declines.