The Development of Visual Information Processes in Adulthood and Old Age

Abstract

The human world is a visual world. Our ability to see was important to our evolutionary past and will be important to our evolutionary future. Locating prey and escaping predators may be less important in the industrial societies of the twentieth century than they were in our past, but other visual tasks have become important. Adults in the modern world must deal with visual tasks never imagined by even our recent ancestors. The development of high speed transportation systems allows us to travel rapidly through a diversity of environments. These developments have created heavy visual monitoring demands for drivers, pedestrians, pilots, and air traffic controllers. They have increased the demands for acquiring spatial layout information and using the visual information that supports moving about in an urban environment. The industrial world has broadened the need for education and educational materials. While adults in modern society may spend little time tracking animals across fields, they spend ever increasing amounts of time tracking words across printed pages.