The purpose of the proposed research effort is to develop and validate pedagogical principles of age-related instruction for the wildest possible range of tasks. The goal is not only to create a better understanding of factors influencing learning of skills in older adults, but also to demonstrate how best to enhance instructional design and implementation to best prepare the older individual to do a specific job, perform a specific task, or work in a specific domain area. We propose a two-phased, but parallel, approach to systematically pursue the goal of identifying a principled approach to instruction based on similarities and differences in learning strategies and capabilities across young and older adults. First, we will develop, enhance, and test a taxonomic characterization of relevant age-related human performance. Next, we will evolve an empirically verified instructional approach based on characteristics of human information processing derived from that taxonomy. This latter phase is crucial in that it ensures that an appropriate instructional technique is applied to the targeted tasks. Three scientific and practical products will result from this effort. First, a principled framework for tutoring system design will be developed. A second product will be actual training systems for learning automatic teller machines, public transportation systems, and medicare/medicaid rules, procedures and bill evaluation. A third product is the development of a human- engineered, practitioner-domains. Hence, our overarching goal is to develop the framework and instructional approach such that principled training prescriptions are accessible to practitioners for the design and implementation of age-specific instructional systems.
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