The conflict detection task represe

The conflict detection task represented a low-level perceptual task that was not very complex. The conflict resolution task provided controllers with the chance to generate their own solutions while taking safety and efficiency measures into consideration. The vectoring task provided controllers with a more dynamic environment in which aircraft sequencing could be done; finally, the airspace management task afforded controllers to vector aircraft, change altitudes, and shed subtasks, affordances that are not unlike the environment in which they currently operate. Hence, it appears that when placed in an increasingly complex environment, superior performance by older controllers may be due to greater reliance on experience that is most useful in a realistic environment and whose mitigating effects are most likely to be evident when the task supports use of that knowledge (Craik & Jennings, 1992; Kirlik, 1995). Our findings are congruent with the supposition of researchers (Abernathy & Hamm, 1995; Chase & Simon, 1973; Gilhooly, Wood, Kinnear, & Green, 1988; Vicente, 1992) who have proposed that experts will outperform novices when information is organized in terms of domain principles, as it was in the current study.
It is important to note that age and experience were confounded with one another in the controller group, which can usually make it difficult to isolate their additive and interactive effects. It is for this reason that participants with no air traffic experience were included in the study, effectively providing a “control” and enabling us to isolate the relative contributions of age and experience independent of one another. Indeed, here we observe that although age-related performance impairments were evident across both cognitive and ATC tasks among older participants, the substantially larger age effect observed for noncontrollers compared with controllers attests to the benefits of domain-specific experience. We also acknowledge that the use of a longitudinal design would have afforded us the opportunity to control for selective attrition effects. However, given the logistical constraints (e.g., extensive timelines for obtaining relevant data sets) associated with the conduct of such a study, this is not possible in most studies of Experience × Age interactions. Nevertheless, we do believe that the present results provide accurate information regarding the benefits of experience (this given that a subset of the results has been observed in previous empirical studies) and that these results are timely. However, we acknowledge that our findings should be supplemented by follow-on research efforts that employ longitudinal techniques as a means of providing converging evidence to support or refute the results presented here.
Another point that warrants discussion is the observation that younger noncontrollers performed as well as younger and older controllers on the ATC task battery. Although such an effect could call into question whether or not such tasks actually require ATC expertise, we note that the task battery was developed in close consultation with professional controllers and, more important, that the battery was sensitive enough to detect performance variations among controllers as a function of task complexity (with the most pronounced effects being observed as the tasks got more and more complex). Hence, we assert that the ecological validity of the battery is sound and that ATC expertise is required to achieve optimal performance, particularly on the most challenging tasks.
A more plausible reason for our finding could be that, given that the experience of interacting with the ATC simulation platform is analogous to playing an interactive video game, younger inexperienced adults are much better suited for such tasks compared with their older counterparts, considering their greater familiarity with playing video games on a day-to-day basis. Indeed, similar effects have been observed in previous empirical work (Gopher, Weil, & Siegel, 1989). This may well explain why younger noncontrollers were able to achieve performance levels equivalent to those of their experienced counterparts on a subset of tasks in the ATC battery. It may be the case that immersion into a full-scope ATC environment (that demands voice communication, physical coordination, and strip handling with other controllers) would better help illustrate the benefits of ATC-specific expertise when performing tasks administered in the ATC battery.
A related concern that we wish to address is that older noncontrollers may have been less computer literate that their experienced and inexperienced counterparts, an effect that may create uncertainty in interpreting the observed Age × Experience interactions. Although this is certainly plausible, we note that older noncontrollers had twice the amount of formal education as their experienced counterparts (3.46 compared with 1.08 years) and were working professionals. As a result, there is little reason to suspect that computer literacy may have been a factor, which affected complex task performance among older noncontrollers.
In sum, we may draw a number of conclusions from these results. First, from a theoretical standpoint, experience appears to moderate the effects of age-related decline on only a subset of the most relevant of cognitive abilities that underlie complex task performance. Second, the magnitude of experience benefits appears to be largely a result of the knowledge older workers use to mitigate the impact of age-related cognitive decrements as task complexity increases. Third, our results suggest that mandatory retirement policies introduced several decades ago to ensure safety across myriad complex professions should perhaps be reexamined. We note that in the ATC domain at least, the present set of data provides countries faced with controller shortages (e.g., United States, Russia, South Africa, and Australia) with one avenue for dealing with this issue and that our findings are congruent with recent field study analysis (Broach & Schroeder, 2006), which has revealed little evidence of age-related performance impairments between older and younger operators.
Given that the world’s population is ageing rapidly (Andreev & Vaupel, 2005; U.S. Census Bureau, 2004), the current results suggesting that older workers are capable of managing complex sociotechnical systems independent of chronological age (at least within the age ranges examined here) should provide a staffing solution (albeit temporary) in domains where skilled labor shortages are likely to be observed, such as ATC (Baguley, 2008;Becker & Milke, 1998). Moreover, there is also reason to be optimistic that the current evidence of older worker success in a domain as complex as ATC may be somewhat indicative of the potential older workers possess in successfully managing other complex sociotechnical systems (e.g., medical, construction, and electrical industry, where similar shortages are being faced). From a social perspective, however, harnessing the capital offered by these workers will depend on not only our ability to overcome traditional age-related stereotypes, but also on embracing the philosophy