Psychology and Aging Hybrid Foraging Search in Younger and Older Age Iris Wiegand, Caroline Seidel, and Jeremy Wolfe Online First Publication, August 15, 2019

Psychology and Aging Hybrid Foraging Search in Younger and Older Age Iris Wiegand, Caroline Seidel, and Jeremy Wolfe Online First Publication, August 15, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag0000387

CITATION Wiegand, I., Seidel, C., & Wolfe, J. (2019, August 15). Hybrid Foraging Search in Younger and Older Age. Psychology and Aging. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag0000387 Psychology and Aging

Hybrid Foraging Search in Younger and Older Age

Iris Wiegand Caroline Seidel Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, and Goethe University Frankfurt Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

Jeremy Wolfe Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School

In hybrid foraging tasks, observers search visual displays, so called patches, for multiple instances of any of several types of targets with the goal of collecting targets as quickly as possible. Here, targets were photorealistic objects. Younger and older adults collected targets by mouse clicks. They could move to the next patch whenever they decided to do so. The number of targets held in memory varied between 8 and 64 objects, and the number of items (targets and distractors) in the patches varied between 60 and 105 objects. Older adults foraged somewhat less efficiently than younger adults due to a more exploitative search strategy. When target items became depleted in a patch and search slowed down, younger adults acted according to the optimal foraging theory and moved on to the next patch when the instantaneous rate of collection was close to their average rate of collection. Older adults, by contrast, were more likely to stay longer and spend time searching for the last few targets. Within a patch, both younger and older adults tended to collect the same type of target in “runs.” This behavior is more efficient than continual switching between target types. Furthermore, after correction for general age-related slowing, RT ϫ set size functions revealed largely preserved attention and memory functions in older age. Hybrid foraging tasks share features with important real-world search tasks. Differences between younger and older observers on this task may therefore help to explain age differences in many complex search tasks of daily life.

Keywords: cognitive aging, optimal foraging, visual attention, memory, strategies

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag0000387.supp

Searching in the visual world is a ubiquitous task of daily life: of people, tablets in the medicine cabinet, or news on web pages. We look for products in the grocery store, our friends in a crowd Older adults experience difficulties in a variety of real-world visual tasks, and there are multiple cognitive processes that poten- tially contribute to less efficient search behavior in older age (Stanovich, 2011). One assumed source is age-related decline in attentional control (e.g., McDowd & Shaw, 2000). In visual X Iris Wiegand, Visual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, search, attentional control is involved in the top-down selection of Boston, Massachusetts, and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, and Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max task-relevant information that is difficult to distinguish from sur- Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany; Caroline Seidel, rounding distracting information, as in a cluttered display or scene Department of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt; Jeremy Wolfe, Vi- (Grahame, Laberge, & Scialfa, 2004; Ho, Scialfa, Caird, & Graw, sual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Departments of 2001; Madden, 2007). Another key function assumed to be af-

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