Age-Related Differences in Positional Dispersion of Fixations in a Multitask Environment

摘要

The present study focused on identifying eye-tracking measures that can provide insight into the nature ofage-related differences in multitasking abilities. While participating in a multitask paradigm, participants’eye-movements, performance data, and subjective information were collected. An investigation of thenature of eye movements between younger (18-25 years of age) and older (50-65 years of age) adultsrevealed that while no differences between fixation counts or fixation durations were observed, thedispersion of fixations was significantly different. Specifically, the fixations of younger adults were morediffuse than those of older adults, whose fixations were significantly more concentrated on the screen. Inaddition, performance differences between the two age groups were observed, with younger adultsperforming significantly better than older adults. These results demonstrate that unobtrusivepsychophysiological measures can be observed in conjunction with the age-related performance differencesobserved in multitask environments, which may provide insight as to the exact nature of these performancedifferences.