Abstract A high task complexity may reduce or prompt people’s decision to search for information, and a high task relevance might stimulate a systematic search, but whether these factors interactive and whether their effects vary by age remain unknown. Therefore, we used a process-tracing program to investigate information searches by 58 younger and 60 older adults related to high- and low-relevance decisions of varying complexity. Older adults searched for decision-related information more thoroughly than younger adults, suggesting that increasing age may not be linked with information-minimizing searches. When the task complexity increased, both age groups showed greater search engagement and more systematic searches, suggesting that people evaluate task demands and allocate more effort to address increasing task complexity. People preferred systematic searches for high-relevance decisions, whereas older, but not younger, adults maintained this pattern for low-relevance decisions. Task complexity and task relevance function independently in the decision-related information search.

中文翻译：

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决策信息搜索中的年龄差异：任务复杂性和任务相关性的作用

摘要 任务复杂度高可能会降低或促使人们搜索信息的决定，任务相关性高可能会激发系统搜索，但这些因素是否相互作用以及它们的影响是否因年龄而异，尚不清楚。因此，我们使用过程跟踪程序来调查 58 名年轻人和 60 名老年人与不同复杂性的高相关性和低相关性决策相关的信息搜索。老年人比年轻人更彻底地搜索与决策相关的信息，这表明年龄增长可能与信息最小化搜索无关。当任务复杂性增加时，两个年龄组都表现出更高的搜索参与度和更系统的搜索，这表明人们会评估任务需求并分配更多精力来解决日益增加的任务复杂性。人们更喜欢对高相关性决策进行系统搜索，而年长但不年轻的成年人则对低相关性决策保持这种模式。任务复杂度和任务相关性在决策相关信息搜索中独立发挥作用。