Preservation of visual attention in older expert orienteers at rest and under physical effort

This study investigated the visual attention of older expert orienteers and older adults not practicing activities with high attentional and psychomotor demands, and considered whether prolonged practice of orienteering may counteract the age-related deterioration of visual attentional performance both at rest and under acute exercise. In two discriminative reaction time experiments, performed both at rest and under submaximal physical workload, visual attention was cued by means of spatial cues of different sizes followed, at different stimulus-onset asynchronies, by compound stimuli with local and global target features. Orienteers, as compared to nonathletes, showed a faster reaction speed and a complex pattern of attentional differences depending on the time constraints of the attentional task, the demands on endogenous attentional control, and the presence or absence of a concomitant effortful motor task. Results suggest that older expert orienteers have developed attentional skills that outweigh, at least at rest, the age-related deficits of visual attentional focusing.     

The effects of new technologies on productivity: An intrafirm diffusion-based assessment

This paper studies the impact of new technologies on productivity from the perspective of the technological diffusion literature. We argue that several stylised facts about the intrafirm diffusion process are not taken into account in most current research, which results in potentially erroneous conclusions. We critically assess different approaches that have been taken when studying the effects of technology adoption on productivity, and relate them to the main findings of the literature on technology diffusion with the aim of identifying the advantages of an intrafirm diffusion approach. We then conduct an empirical analysis on a sample that describes the diffusion of an innovation - the Automated Teller Machine - among Spanish savings banks from 1986 to 2004 in both its extensive (interfirm) and intensive (intrafirm) dimensions. Our results show that only the consideration of the intrafirm diffusion process is able to account for the contribution of the technology to productivity.     

Intrafirm diffusion of new technologies: an empirical application

Research on the diffusion of new technologies has centred on the study of the interfirm rate of diffusion, paying much less attention to intrafirm aspects. This paper attempts to overcome this gap in the literature by analysing the factors that influence the speed with which a new technology, the ATM, is fully adopted. The data over which the hypotheses are tested belongs to the Spanish savings banks market. The results show that the rate of intrafirm diffusion is explained by innovation, firm and market characteristics. In testing our hypotheses we make use of both traditional methods and survival analysis techniques.