An experiment was conducted to compare the functional performance of 20 young adults and 20 older adults in two types of tasks. One type of task was normal activities of daily living which are meaningful, familiar, and well practiced while the other type was a contrived, relatively unfamiliar task of wrapping a package. While young and old adults did not differ in the ratings of the familiarity of the two tasks, results from an Age by Task Type mixed MANOVA demonstrated a significant age difference in both activities. This suggests that older adults show age-related decline with tasks even when those tasks are familiar, practiced, and ecologically valid.

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