Age differences in information search

Abstract

Past research often found that older adults searched less in terms of browsing and generating keywords; few studies examined the processes and underlying mechanism that caused the age-related reduction on search. In the current study, about 20 younger and 20 older adults performed ill-defined search tasks with a search box we implemented. In addition to the age differences in the quantities of search, results showed that there were qualitative age differences in allocating resources to exploration and exploitation across tasks varying in the accessibility of target information. Older adults were found to do more exploitation in terms of spending longer time and viewing more information before initiating a new search. However, older adults were adaptive to task environments in terms of reducing the number of websites viewed before revising a keyword and increasing the time spent on initiating a new search in the low accessible task, in which more exploration was preferred. The links between difference in search process and the age differences in cognitive abilities were also discussed. INTRODUCTIONWith the rise of information technology, people can be faced with an overwhelming amount of information. As a consequence, search has become an important cognitive process to study for understanding how humans regulate their efforts across different resources to achieve their goals. We can think of search as entailing two phases, exploration and exploitation. Exploitation involves uptake and engagement of current information, and exploration involves navigation through the environment to locate resources. During search, people make decisions about when to stop exploiting the current resource and to explore for other resources. For example, in web search, users may use search engines to learn a new topic. After obtaining the search results from the search engines, users may follow the suggested search results and browse the information on the website, or refine the keywords to obtain different information. While viewing a website, users also face the decision to continue reading the information on the current website, browse other webpages following the links on the current website, or even go back to the search engines to refine their search. Thus, users need to decide when to switch from exploitation to exploration to take the best advantage of the information resource under the constraints of time and efforts. Information ForagingThe tradeoff between exploration and exploitation has been studied in many areas of research, such as decision making and web information search. Pirolli and Card (1999) proposed the information foraging theory using the analogue of how animals forage for food among patches in the wild to explain how people find information among multiple information resources, such as the WWW. There are some similarities between food foraging and web information search. First, information is distributed in clusters, such as websites, like patches in the wild. Unlike food, information cannot be depleted. Howev...

Hybrid foraging search in younger and older age.

“…It has been shown that older adults choose less effective strategies than younger adults in other cognitive tasks and that these can lead to poorer performance (Brigham & Pressley, 1988; Lemaire, 2010; Price, Hertzog, & Dunlosky, 2008). In the present hybrid foraging example, this might be a strategic change in the trade-off between exploration and exploitation (Chin et al, 2015). Older adults seem to adopt a more conservative, exploitative strategy that encourages them to pick more targets than what is optimal if the goal is to maximize the rate of picking, taking time into account (which was the explicit instruction in the present experiment).…”

“…Future studies, however, should aim for larger samples with balanced gender distributions across age groups to control for potential sex differences in performance. Another question for future research is the generalizability of the age effects to other tasks that are not primarily visual and require strategic self-regulation, such as foraging-like behavior in internal information search (Chin, Anderson, et al, 2015; Hills & Dukas, 2012; Hills, Jones, & Todd, 2012; Pirolli, 2007).…”

“…Besides these cognitive limitations, age-related changes in strategies, goals, and beliefs (Mather, 2006) influence how older observers gather information in the visual world. Previous research suggests that older adults, compared to younger adults, favor exploitative over explorative behavior (Chin, Anderson, Chin, & Fu, 2015; Chin, Fu, & Kannampallil, 2009; Chin, Payne, Fu, Morrow, & Stine-Morrow, 2015). However, aging can be associated with a decrease in exploitation in difficult search tasks.…”

A bias toward the unknown: individual and environmental factors influencing exploratory behavior

“… 21 In search tasks, they exploit resources more than they explore new ones. 22 These reductions in risk‐taking and exploration behavior match the rise and fall of the dopaminergic system across the life span, with a deterioration of dopaminergic functioning in old age. 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 Therefore, when investigating exploratory behavior, it is relevant to take age into account.…”

“…Older adults show lower risk‐taking behavior and prefer familiar over novel options 21 . In search tasks, they exploit resources more than they explore new ones 22 . These reductions in risk‐taking and exploration behavior match the rise and fall of the dopaminergic system across the life span, with a deterioration of dopaminergic functioning in old age 23–26 .…”