Age Differences in Learning Maintenance Skills: A Field Study

The effects of age and previous relevant experience on learning anxiety, strategies, and performance were studied in 43 workers aged 25 to 49 during a 1-week maintenance vocational training course. The results showed that increased age was associated with higher training-related anxiety as measured at the beginning of the course. However, no age difference could be found in the level of knowledge assessed after 3 days of training. This was confirmed by another problem-solving-type test that took place on the last day. Previous experience had no effect on anxiety, and it did enable us to predict higher scores for the first test but not for the second one. Analysis of behavior strategies revealed that older trainees consulted and annotated the course material more often than the younger ones during the learning process. The results are discussed in relation to those obtained in previous laboratory and field studies on the same subject.