Neil Charness - US grants

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): The long-term objectives are to identify micro-level cognitive processes and macro-level cultural mechanisms that support the development of high-level skill in problem solving across the life-span. A major focus is on the compensatory mechanisms that older adults may use to allow them to maintain high performance levels on difficult problem-solving tasks despite age-related declines in information processing efficiency. Understanding compensatory processes may be instrumental in helping aging adults to cope intelligently with negative changes in physical and mental health, as well as to help maintain the productivity of our aging labor force. We will focus on expert problem solving in chess, because chess problem solving relies on basic perceptual, attentional, memory, and search processes,enabling it to serve as a model task environment for exploring age trends in cognition in general, and expert problem solving in particular. Further, public records of chess ratings enable population-level analyses of life-span and cultural patterns. The following questions form the core concerns of this project: How do chess players acquire and maintain skill in chess across the life-span? What types of study and practice patterns do they use? What role do cultural and social factors associated with age, nationality, and gender play in acquiring skill? Can older players compensate for reduced processing efficiency by drawing on acquired knowledge? What types of knowledge support chess expertise? How does the search process, the core component of problem solving in chess, vary with age, skill, and problem difficulty? We will examine longitudinal chess performance via chess rating lists from the USA and from the World Chess Federation (FIDE). A subset of these players in Germany, Russia, Canada, and the USA will be contracted to participate in the following projects: A) Interviews to gather practicing behavior data, shown to be one of the primary determinants of skill acquisition and maintenance. We will probe social and cultural supports for acquiring and maintaining skill. Follow-up studies will examine practice on-line for a subset of players. B) Chess and non-chess control experiments that will probe the perceptual and cognitive components of skill. Eye-movement studies will trace perceptual matching processes. Time-accuracy functions and think aloud procedures will probe memory and problem solving processes. We will model age and skill effects using EPAM-like computer simulations that vary speed and working memory capacity.

The goals of our research and collaborative projects are to create tools and training techniques to promote cognition and health in older adults. Research Project 1 (Older GOMS Toolbox) will use meta-analytic techniques to generate valid information processing parameters for modeling older adult performance and to create a toolbox that the engineering and design community can use for GOMS modeling when designing technology products. We also aim to improve the reliability of task analysis and modeling with these tools. We also will extend such models to predict error rates in addition to task completion times. These tools will also be deployed to model devices and software in our collaborative projects. Research Project 2 (Cognitive Training Toolbox) will use simple hand-held systems to promote basic cognitive abilities. The specific aim is to promote a broad set of abilities -memory, attention, and executive control - with a well-integrated intervention based on experimental evidence of efficacy. Collaborative Project 1 (Effective software training) investigates training techniques to promote efficient use by older novice adults of a simple web-based e-mail client from partner Commino. We will evaluate a combined cognitive and emotional training intervention by incorporating stress reduction techniques developed in CREATE II to aid learners in combination with theoretically-motivated training techniques (spaced retrieval, delayed self-tests). Collaborative Project 2 (Mobile monitoring) assesses the privacy/confidentiality preferences and acceptability/comfort of a wrist-worn wireless monitoring device designed for community-dwelling older adults by partner AFrame Digital. The device registers and transmits continuous vital sign data (e.g., blood pressure, pulse/ox, fall detection). Experimental studies will determine what type of reporting interface enables older adults to make rapid and accurate evaluations of health status. The goals are to improve functionality and acceptability of mobile monitoring devices for older health care recipients. We will also be contributing to theory about cognition and aging through the use of our cross-site cognitive assessment battery and our participation in the crosssite field trial testing a personalized reminder information and social management system (PRISM).

Project Summary The goal of this research is to discover the best methods to improve cognition and the ability to perform important everyday activities of older adults suffering from age-related cognitive decline using technology- based cognitive interventions. Any successful cognitive aging intervention must satisfy two requirements: 1) the intervention must effectively and efficiently improve cognitive abilities necessary for important activities required for independent living, and 2) the intervention must be one that older adults are able and willing to engage in. When either of these requirements is not met an intervention is likely to fail. Study 1 aims to assess the comparative effectiveness of technology-delivered narrow and broad interventions designed to improve cognition and support functional independence. Before and after training a variety of outcome measures will be assessed. A sub-goal of this study is to create indices of functional abilities whose failure could be catastrophic to older adults; therefore we adopt a focus on simulated versions of Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs). We will also assess whether individual differences mediate or moderate cognitive intervention efficiency. This study will contribute to fundamental knowledge about intervention approaches, as well as contribute to theories of intervention efficiency. Study 2 will investigate technology- based intervention adherence. An intervention that an older adult does not adhere to will not have the desired outcome. Older adults will be asked to adhere to a technology-based cognitive intervention and we will explore the predictions of several technology adoption and medical adherence models applied to this domain, as well as apply a novel temporal-discounting framework to explore the amount of time older adults are willing to invest in training to obtain benefits in the future. This study will provide guidelines and a model of adherence so that technology-based interventions can be designed that promote adherence. The sum of the results from the two proposed studies of the FSU project will provide guidelines for designing targeted, individualized training that effectively improves cognition and IADL performance while also ensuring that maximum benefits are obtained by promoting intervention adherence.