Age-related differences in corrected and inhibited pointing movements

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Rossit, Stéphanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6640-2289 and Harvey, Monika (2008) Age-related differences in corrected and inhibited pointing movements. Experimental Brain Research, 185 (1). pp. 1-10. ISSN 0014-4819

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Abstract

It has been widely reported that aging is accompanied by a decline in motor skill performance and in particular, it has been shown that older subjects take longer to adapt their ongoing reach in response to a target location shift. In the present experiment, we investigated the influence of aging on the ability to perform trajectory corrections in response to a target jump, but also assessed inhibition by asking a younger and an older group of participants to either adapt or stop their ongoing movement in response to a target location change. Results showed that although older subjects took longer to initiate, execute, correct and inhibit an ongoing reach, they performed both tasks with the same level of accuracy as the younger sample. Moreover, the slowing was also observed when older subjects were asked to point to stationary targets. Our findings thus indicate that aging does not specifically influence the ability to perform or inhibit fast online corrections to target location changes, but rather produces a general slowing and increased variability of movement planning, initiation and execution to both perturbed and stationary targets. For the first time, we demonstrate that aging is not accompanied by a decrease in the inhibition of motor control.

Item Type: Article
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 26 Oct 2015 16:01
Last Modified: 24 Oct 2022 05:08
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54825
DOI: 10.1007/s00221-007-1126-6

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