ABSTRACT
Analysing the effects of ageing in the context of occupational activity involves a decisive factor, that of professional experience and in particular the factor of familiarity with a task. Whereas it is possible in experimental studies to formulate experimental procedures permitting specific work on the evolution of a certain number of elementary functions with age, by testing subjects’ levels of experience and familiarity in relation to the tasks given them, the problem is much more complex in a real situation. Professional activity not only makes use of elementary capacities involved in and required by the task, but also relies on the person’s experience. Indeed, in an occupational context, the factor of age not only constitutes an indicator of time, it incorporates the genesis of the individual and his or her past experience in particular thus his or her professional ‘background’ (for example, the number of years spent at the same workstation) and all the know-how acquired progressively during years of working. Comparing the activity of young air traffic controllers with that of their older colleagues in the context of work therefore requires perceiving ageing in terms of progression and accumulation of competencies. As in any familiar situation, it is difficult to separate what in work is pertinent to the effects of ageing, on the one hand, from that which is pertinent to know-how and experience on the other. The latter very often permits controllers to acquire skills adapted to the work situation and to minimise the impact of ageing, thereby raising the question of the effects of age in a more complex and less reductionist definition above all closer to the everyday manifestation of ageing.
