The primary goal of the research is to determine whether older adults, who show explicit memory deficits, can nevertheless acquire complex, domain-specific knowledge and skills, and apply them effectively in novel """"""""contexts"""""""". The knowledge and skills to be investigated are those related to the understanding and operation of a computer. Older adults have been slow to take advantage of modern technology, and as a result are threatened by decreased status and isolation in a society that is becoming increasingly dominated by computers. It seems certain that elderly people could benefit significantly from the use of computers if given the opportunity to learn how to use them. Computers could be used to provide opportunities for continued learning, for communication and maintenance of social interaction, for entertainment, for home management, and even for career development in late adulthood. The proposed studies will attempt to teach older adults several computer tasks including computer-related vocabulary, simple computer programming, data-entry, database management and word-processing. The training technique will be the method of vanishing cues, a cuing technique that permits self-paced independent learning through the provision of cue information, which is gradually reduced across trails. The method has been used successfully with memory-impaired brain-damaged patients, and is designed to take advantage of memory and learning functions that are often preserved even in severe amnesia. Similar functions remain intact in aging individuals although there are almost certainly significant differences between the two groups as well. The strategy for the present research is to extend the methodology and applications developed for use with amnesic patients to an aged population. The relation between the performance of old and young subjects, as well as the relation between the performance of elderly and brain-damaged subjects, should provide information concerning the processes and structures involved in complex learning and transfer tasks. In addition, to the extent that learning and memory functions compromised in aging can be identified, it should be possible to structure future rehabilitation programs in ways that take advantage of cognitive strengths and minimize dependence on cognitive weaknesses. Two theoretical issues are addressed in the proposed experiments. One concerns the representation of newly-acquired knowledge in semantic memory and the other concerns the adequacy of a processing resources account of cognitive aging in explaining complex learning and transfer phenomenon.
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