Person-Environment Relationships in Adulthood: Implications for Human Factors Engineering

Abstract

Environments for aging and the aged are best designed if human factors engineers incorporate a developmental view of adulthood in their planning. Accordingly, environments for living should be designed to accommodate the transitions between stages of adult life as well as the periods of stability. The optimal human factors interventions involve both psychosocial and physical aspects of the environment and include changing people through psychological intervention. Examples of human factors engineering for aging in perception, learning, and memory, as well as work, leisure, and health, illustrate areas that require successively more complicated plans for intervention.

Attention and Driving Skills in Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

“…The question also needs to be addressed in the larger context of human factors issues in the aging population (Fozard, 1981;Small, 1987). However, issues specific to older individuals with dementing illnesses have received scant attention from the human factors profession, with one or two exceptions (e.g., Calkins, 1988).…”

Elderly People and the Environment

“…The extensive work in barrier-free design (e.g., Bednar, 1977) and other approaches to supportive environments for the elderly (e.g., Parsons, 1981;Rashko, 1974) levels of functioning or adaptation might be improved through changes in environmental features which better recognize the reduced capacities for action often associated with advanced age. Human factors engineering, with its focus on the analysis and design of physical spaces and objects which best match human capabilities, needs, and limitations, has direct conceptual and methodological relevance to the study of problems involving the older person and the physical environment (Chapanis, 1974a;Fozard, 1981;Olshan, 1977).…”

“…Discrete environments designed for a given level of functioning are likely to be appropriate for a finite period of time because both the levels and types of needs are ever changing. Because of individual differences in levels of functioning and associated rates of change (Fozard, 1981), some proportion of residents in any particular setting are likely to be underserved or overserved. Fourth, assuming that environments and user characteristics could be fine-tuned for better matches, the employment of discrete environments as a response to changing needs implies an increased number of relocations by older people to new environments.…”

“…Rather, it has been more concerned with the effects of age on characteristics relevant to human performance such as anthropometric stature (Stoudt, 1981) perceptual-motor capability (Levinson, 1981), or signal perception (Welford, 1981) without specifically relating these data to designs for task environments. Whether these studies seek to describe characteristics of an older population, or contrast younger and older populations, the overall objective has been to establish age-relevant values for accepted or standard human performance characteristics (Fozard, 1981). Results generally suggest that task performance and physical capabilities show age-related differences.…”

Asian Social Science, Vo. 5, No. 6, June, 2009. All in one PDF file.

“…Only more recently have population studies included specific data on individuals 75 years of age and older (Kuczmarski et al, 2000;Perissinotto et al, 2002;Velasquez-Alva et al, 2003;Santos et al, 2004). Fozard (1981) and Stoudt (1981) have pointed out that older people differ anthropometrically with inter-individual variance increasing with age. Hence anthropometric data available for younger generation cannot be used even with allowances for the age-related changes for the elderly population.…”