Transitional spaces can be a lighting barrier for oldr adults

LASAGNO CECILIA; PATTINI ANDREA; ISSOLIO LUIS; COLOMBO ELISA

Toulouse, France

Congreso; 34th European Conference on Visual Perception; 2011

European Conference on Visual Perception

A Transitional Space (TS) -from exterior to interior- becomes in "lighting barrier" due to the extreme lighting conditions involved. Considering the increasing of the adaptation time becoming with ageing, strong illumination change effects will depend on people age. An experiment was performed to test this dependency. We measured the time required to identify the orientation of the aperture of two rings when the person moves from the outdoor to the indoor of a building. The adaptation of the subjects was determined by the outdoor conditions (sunny) and the change of adaptation luminance was about 4 magnitude orders. Contrast stimuli -0.45 and size aperture 0.7 degree. Thirteen older adults (60^67), nine younger ones (30^52) and eight young adults (20^30 years) with healthy vision participated of this experiment. All subjects repeated the task five times. The oldest group needed 4 times the time required by the youngest group and the middle group needed an intermediate value, to perform the task. Applying a Multilevel Model, which considers the observations dependency, we found that the efficiency differences between age groups are statistically significant (p<0.001). These outcomes point out the importance of adequately addressing the TS to support the daily life activities of older adults.