Human Factors Research Needs for an Aging Population (1990) / Chapter Skim
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1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Pages 1-6
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How well will the large population of older Americans be able to live and function independently, carrying out the activities and tasks essential to an acceptable quality of life? This question is being posed with increasing frequency by researchers and policy makers who know that aggregated changes in circumstances and functional capacities affect the ability of older Americans to complete desirable and essential life activities.
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The task for the human factors engineer is to understand how the characteristics and needs of individuals change over the course of the adult life span and to devise strategies to accommodate these changes through the design of appropriate objects, tools, living envirorunents, and organizational systems. This report attempts to spotlight this problem and what is needed to help resolve it.
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At the workshop the experts were Eked to summarize the major points of their working papers and lead discussion of relevant hum" factors issues. The overall scheme was to consider the broad range of living tasks, to try to understand the demands of these tasks, and to identify what is known and what is not known about the ways in which aging modifies task performance and changes the requirements for design and enviromnental support for these activities.
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For example, average visual and auditory acuity decline considerably with age, as do average strength and speed of response. Changes in cognition are less well defined but include an average loss of at least some kinds of memory function, declines in perceptual flexibility, slowing of ~st~rnulus encod~ng,~ and increased difficulty in the acquisition of complex mental skills.
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~ addition to improving the knowledge base and making technology more responsive, better dissemination of knowledge and wider implementation of remedial techniques akeacly available are needed. While in the gerontological and safety communities much is known about the routine activities of older persons, ~ the wider human factors community little attention has been paid to the problems encountered by the elderly.
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In particular, we discus the desirability of future workshops focused more directly on particular task domains. We recommend the creation of internships and thesis support for graduate students working in this area, and we discus the possibility of extended Sumner sern~nars,~ specifically constructed data bases, and/or guidelines on human factors and aging.
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