Learning new visuo-motor gains at early and late working age.
Modern workplaces often require adaptation to novel visuo-motor transformations. Findings on age-related variations of such adaptation are rather inconsistent, suggesting that whether or not age-related impairments do occur depends on boundary conditions. This paper examined the hypotheses that age-related variations affect primarily strategic adjustments to novel transformations and can be found for complex (non-linear) transformations, but not for simple (linear) ones. After a practice period with linear and non-linear visuo-motor transformations, open-loop performance, after-effects and explicit knowledge were examined. Consistent with previous findings, older participants had longer movement times and shorter open-loop amplitudes, more so for long than for short target amplitudes. However, the study did not find any age-related variation of adaptation to a novel visuo-motor gain. Regarding adaptation to a non-linear transformation, the findings suggest slightly superior explicit knowledge of younger adults and the development of slightly more efficient closed-loop processes in the course of practice.
Heuer
H
H
Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie an der Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany. heuer@ifado.de
Hegele
M
M
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001676:Biofeedback, Psychology; D003071:Cognition; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*