Investigating the Roles of Knowledge and Cognitive Abilities in Older Adult Information Seeking on the Web

Abstract

This study investigated the influences of knowledge, particularly Internet, Web browser, and search engine knowledge, as well as cognitive abilities on older adult information seeking on the Internet. The emphasis on aspects of cognition was informed by a modeling framework of search engine information-seeking behavior. Participants from two older age groups were recruited: twenty people in a younger-old group (ages 60-70) and twenty people in an older-old group (ages 71-85). Ten younger adults (ages 18-39) served as a comparison group. All participants had at least some Internet search experience. The experimental task consisted of six realistic search problems, all involving information related to health and well-being and which varied in degree of complexity. The results indicated that though necessary, Internet-related knowledge was not sufficient in explaining information-seeking performance, and suggested that a combination of both knowledge and key cognitive abilities is important for successful information seeking. In addition, the cognitive abilities that were found to be critical for task performance depended on the search problem's complexity. Also, significant differences in task performance between the younger and the two older age groups were found on complex, but not on simple problems. Overall, the results from this study have implications for instructing older adults on Internet information seeking and for the design of Web sites.

Interactive effects of age and interface differences on search strategies and performance

“…For younger adults, in addition to the consistent main effect of task (F(1,21)=16.41, p<0.001), we also found a main effect of interface and a significant interaction effect of task and interface (F(1,21)=27.36, F (1,21)=6.34, all p's<0.05). For older adults, there was only a main effect of task with more within-category links clicked when the tasks matched with the interface.…”

Overcoming the linguistic divide: a barrier to consumer health information

“…For health consumers, a fundamental poverty in the mental representation of the medical domain underlies issues with terminology, and it is likely to affect three stages of information retrieval outlined by Keselman and her colleagues [43]: (i) the formation of a theory or hypothesis based on background knowledge, (ii) generation of a search goal, and (iii) evaluation of search results. Domain knowledge influences search strategies and the ability to benefit from help tools [44][45][46][47]. Therefore, the success of efforts aimed at CHV is likely to be limited without mechanisms for helping the consumer form a richer mental representation of the medical or health issue for which they seek information.…”

The role of cognitive flexibility and vocabulary abilities of younger and older users in searching for information on the web

“…one that makes less demand on spatial abilities, and greater demand on vocabulary). Sharit et al (2008) showed that a combination of both Internet-related knowledge and cognitive abilities such as reasoning, working memory and perceptual speed, and to some extent verbal fluency, predicted the age-related differences in information searching performance.…”