662 Psychological Experimentation Addressing Practical Concerns
comparable disabilities is similar whereas that of older
people is undoubtedly higher. In any case, the percentage of
the population that experiences nontrivial difficulties because
of physical or mental disabilities is large enough to represent
a major national concern for both economic and humanitar-
ian reasons. The situation may be assumed to be comparable
in other countries as well.
Much experimentation has been driven by an interest in
developing aids for people who have disabilities of various
sorts. Many devices have been developed to help people func-
tion effectively despite one or another type of handicap; these
include mechanical limbs, automatic readers that will output
speech or a tactile representation of what is read, tactile maps,
sonar canes, and navigation systems for visually impaired
people (Loomis, Golledge, Klatzky, 1998; Redden & Stern,
1983; Stern & Redden, 1982; see also chapter by Klatzky &
Lederman in this volume). Generally a great deal of experi-
mentation with potential users of such systems is required to
determine whether they will be effective in operational situa-
tions, or how they might be made so. As Mann (1982) has
noted, there is going to be no shortage of hardware in the
future—the ability to package ever larger amounts of com-
puter power in very small spaces ensures that there will be
many attempts to build sophisticated devices to help meet the
needs of people with disabilities—but much experimentation
will be required to ensure the utility of the inventions. Many
of the questions that need to be addressed are psychological:
“How do you organize and present information to the ‘wrong’
sense, so that it is logical to the blind person or the deaf
person?...Howdoyouoperate a sort of mechanical organ
player so that it modulates sensations on the skin and in the
ear and projects a sense of what this room looks like and how
to negotiate it?” (Mann, 1982, p. 73).
The Psychology of Aging
Between 1890 and 1990, the average life expectancy at birth
increased by about 75% for Whites and just about doubled
for non-Whites in the United States (Johnson, 1997). Spec-
tacular increases have been realized also in other industrial-
ized countries. It is not surprising that as the percentage of the
population that lives far beyond conventional retirement age
has been steadily increasing, more and more attention has
been paid by researchers to questions of special relevance to
the elderly (Fisk & Rogers, 1996; Rogers & Fisk, 2000).
Research has been motivated by concern for understanding
and meeting special needs that many elderly people are likely
to have with respect to transportation (Barr & Eberhard, 1991;
Eberhard & Barr, 1992; Kostyniuk & Kitamura, 1987),
communication (Czaja, Guerrier, Nair, & Landauer, 1993),
work performance (Czaja & Sharit, 1998; Salthouse,
Hambrick, Lukas, & Dell, 1996; Salthouse & Maurer, 1996),
and health care (Gardner-Bonneau & Gosbee, 1997;
Klatzky & Ayoub, 1995), among other aspects of living. Many
researchers have been seeking ways to enhance the cognitive
functioning of the elderly; much of this work has focused on
memory, which often tends to show decreasing functionality
with increasing age (Verhaeghen, Marcoen, & Goossens,
1992; West, 1989; Yesavage, Rose, & Bower, 1983).
The question of how the ability to perform complex tasks
may change with advancing age has been given some atten-
tion, as has that of what can be done to compensate for typi-
cal losses in sensory acuity and motor strength and dexterity.
Airplane piloting and automobile driving are two such tasks
that have been the focus of research on aging (Hardy &
Parasuraman, 1997). Interest in the effects of aging on auto-
mobile driving has been fueled by the changing demograph-
ics of the driving population. As the general population’s age
distribution continues to shift to the right, the percentage of
all automobile drivers who are elderly should continue to in-
crease proportionately; some difficulties might be expected
simply from the fact that highways have typically been de-
signed on the basis of data collected with young male drivers
(Waller, 1991). The effects on driving performance of de-
creases in visual acuity—especially for night vision—that
may be so gradual that they go unnoticed illustrates one focus
of experimental work in this area (Leibowitz, 1996).
Difficulties that some elderly people have in using high-
tech devices have also stimulated experimental research.
Elderly people often can benefit from specially designed in-
terfaces, and optimal approaches to training in their use may
differ from those that are more effective with younger people.
These observations pertain to personal computers (Charness,
Schuman, & Boritz, 1992; Czaja, 1997; Czaja & Sharit,
1998), automated teller machines (Mead & Fisk, 1998;
Rogers, Fisk, Mead, Walker, & Cabrera, 1996), and home-
based medical devices (Klatzky & Ayoub, 1995). The impli-
cations that declining sensory acuity with increasing age has
for such activities as reading Braille has also stimulated ex-
perimental research (Stevens, Foulke, & Patterson, 1996).
We have mentioned a few problem areas in which applied
psychological experimentation has been done to good effect.
Many more could be mentioned. Several are discussed in
other chapters of this book. A desire to address practical
problems motivated much of the earliest work in experimen-
tal psychology and has continued to play a major role in set-
ting the research agenda for many experimentalists to the
present day.