University of Southampton
Department of Psychology

The Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory

Twenty-four Younger (M= 19) and 24 older (M=73) adults participated in a task that required the use of wooden blocks. Prior to the construction task, half the participants from each age group were first shown limited examples of how the blocks could be used, and the other half of the participants received no such examples. Performance of all participants was then tested by using the blocks in tasks that were not included in the examples. The participants who did not see prior examples used the blocks in a variety of ways, and there was no difference in performance between the younger and older participants. The participants who saw prior examples tended to restrict their use of the blocks to the ways used in the examples, and needed less time to complete the task. Furthermore, the effect of prior knowledge was considerably stronger with the older participants; relative to the young participants, the older participants relied much more on the knowledge conveyed in the examples and were less likely to explore and try other alternatives.