Pak Richard, McLaughlin Anne Collins, Leidheiser William, Rovira Ericka
a Department of Psychology , Clemson University , Clemson , SC , USA.
b Department of Psychology , North Carolina State University , Raleigh , NC , USA.
Ergonomics. 2017 Apr;60(4):518-532. doi: 10.1080/00140139.2016.1189599. Epub 2016 Jul 13.
A leading hypothesis to explain older adults' overdependence on automation is age-related declines in working memory. However, it has not been empirically examined. The purpose of the current experiment was to examine how working memory affected performance with different degrees of automation in older adults. In contrast to the well-supported idea that higher degrees of automation, when the automation is correct, benefits performance but higher degrees of automation, when the automation fails, increasingly harms performance, older adults benefited from higher degrees of automation when the automation was correct but were not differentially harmed by automation failures. Surprisingly, working memory did not interact with degree of automation but did interact with automation correctness or failure. When automation was correct, older adults with higher working memory ability had better performance than those with lower abilities. But when automation was incorrect, all older adults, regardless of working memory ability, performed poorly. Practitioner Summary: The design of automation intended for older adults should focus on ways of making the correctness of the automation apparent to the older user and suggest ways of helping them recover when it is malfunctioning.
一个用来解释老年人过度依赖自动化的主要假说是，工作记忆会随着年龄增长而衰退。然而，这一点尚未得到实证检验。当前实验的目的是研究工作记忆如何影响老年人在不同自动化程度下的表现。与一个得到充分支持的观点相反，即当自动化正确时，更高程度的自动化有利于表现，但当自动化出现故障时，更高程度的自动化会越来越损害表现，老年人在自动化正确时受益于更高程度的自动化，但在自动化出现故障时并未受到不同程度的损害。令人惊讶的是，工作记忆并未与自动化程度相互作用，但确实与自动化的正确性或故障相互作用。当自动化正确时，工作记忆能力较高的老年人比能力较低的老年人表现更好。但当自动化不正确时，所有老年人，无论工作记忆能力如何，表现都很差。从业者总结：为老年人设计的自动化应专注于让老年人清楚了解自动化正确性的方法，并提出在自动化出现故障时帮助他们恢复的方法。
