Task demands and problem-solving strategies in middle-aged and older adults.

Elderly individuals tend to use less efficient strategies on problem-solving tasks such as the Twenty Questions task than younger adults. Two studies were undertaken in an attempt to facilitate the problem-solving performance of elderly individuals by manipulating the demands of the problem-solving tasks. In the first study, problems that were so difficult as to be virtually insoluble without the use of an efficient strategy were compared with standard Twenty Questions problems. While middle-aged individuals tended to use an efficient strategy on both the difficult and the standard problems, elderly individuals tended to use an efficient strategy much more frequently on the difficult problems than on the standard problems. In the second study, problems with stimuli that were more easily classifiable than the standard stimuli were compared with standard Twenty Questions problems. Middle-aged individuals again tended to use an efficient strategy on both types of problems while elderly individuals tended to use an efficient strategy much more frequently on the problems with the easily classifiable stimuli. The fact that elderly individuals can use more efficient strategies under certain circumstances when they have not been given training in the use of such strategies suggests that the elderly have such strategies in their repertoires. It is not clear why they are less likely than younger adults to use efficient strategies in at least some problem-solving situations.