Sanford A J, Jack E, Maule A J
Gerontology. 1977;23(3):205-10. doi: 10.1159/000212189.
Previous research has shown that older Ss tend to be less selective in multi-source monitoring tasks in that they do not observe the more likely source of information as frequently as do the young. On the other hand, it has also been found that in a simple guessing-game or probability matching task older Ss are no different in their patterns of prediction. An experiment is described below in which old and young Ss take part in a simple quessing-game task where uncertainty as to the success of a guess is made artificially high by the introduction of a proportion of trials on which the stimulus event occurring could not be guessed. Under these conditions old Ss were less selective in their responses. It is suggested that the results support a view that older Ss are less selective at high levels of uncertainty in the likelihood of a guess being the correct one, and that the result is consistent with both types of earlier results, goes part-way towards clarifying the differences, and provides a further example of a situation in which attenuated guessing-selectivity is associated with age.
先前的研究表明，年长的被试在多源监测任务中往往选择性较差，因为他们不像年轻人那样频繁地观察更有可能的信息来源。另一方面，研究还发现，在简单的猜谜游戏或概率匹配任务中，年长的被试在预测模式上没有差异。下面描述了一项实验，在该实验中，年长和年轻的被试参与了一个简单的猜谜游戏任务，通过引入一定比例的试验，使猜测成功的不确定性人为地提高，在这些试验中，无法猜出发生的刺激事件。在这些条件下，年长的被试在反应中选择性较差。有人认为，这些结果支持了这样一种观点，即年长的被试在猜测正确可能性的高不确定性水平下选择性较差，并且该结果与早期的两种结果都一致，在一定程度上澄清了差异，并提供了另一个例子，说明猜测选择性减弱与年龄相关的情况。
