Digital and analog approaches for managing daily activities in younger and older adults

Objective: Technology is increasingly critical for performing daily activities, which has multiple implications for the practice of clinical neuropsychology. This study sought to characterize use of digital and traditional analog approaches to instrumental activities of daily living (iADLs) among samples of younger and older adults and identify cognitive factors associated with self-perceived errors in using digital approaches. Method: Sixty community-dwelling adults aged 50 and older and 46 younger healthy adults aged 35 and younger completed a telephone-based research evaluation including demographics, mood, general health, and neurocognitive functioning. Participants also completed a questionnaire on frequency of usage and perceived errors in completing nine iADLs via digital and analog approaches. Results: Participants overall reported using digital more frequently than analog approaches at a very large effect size, with a digital preference most obvious for activities such as navigation and financial account management. The younger group reported using digital approaches more frequently than the older group at a large effect size. Better cognitive performance was associated with less frequent use of analog, but not digital, approaches. Furthermore, better cognition was associated with moderately less frequent self-reported digital errors in the older, but not the younger, groups. Conclusions: Younger and older adults are increasingly adopting digital approaches to performing daily tasks. This highlights both the need and opportunity for the field of clinical neuropsychology to better understand how technology impacts the ability to perform daily tasks and develop assessment tools that adequately capture how patients are functioning in a digitally enriched environment.