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An experiment examined the effects of age on utilization and perceived reliability of an imperfectly reliable decision-making aid in a luggage x-ray screening task. Forty-five young adults and 45 elderly adults performed a simulated luggage screening task. Some subjects were provided the assistance of an automated decision aid with a hit rate of .90 and a false alarm rate of .25. Others performed the task with no aid. Signal-detection analysis revealed that automation improved sensitivity only for younger participants, suggesting a tendency for older participants to underutilize the aid's recommendations. Data also revealed unique patterns of individual differences in cue reliance among older and younger participants. Perceived reliability of the aid did not differ between age groups. Order of information presentation (with the aid's recommendation coming before or after the raw data) had little effect for either age group.
McCarley et al. (Wed,) studied this question.