Diminished motor skill development in elderly: Indications for limited motor chunk use

Verwey, Willem B. (2010) Diminished motor skill development in elderly: Indications for limited motor chunk use. Acta Psychologica, 134 (2). pp. 206-214. ISSN 0001-6918

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Abstract:	The present study examined whether elderly use motor chunks after practicing discrete keying sequences, just like young adults, or whether they perhaps learn these movement patterns in a different way. To that end, elderly (75–88) and young adults (18–28) practiced as part of the discrete sequence production (DSP) task two fixed series of three and six key presses. The results demonstrate that elderly did improve with practice but this improvement was largely sequence-unspecific. Detailed analyses showed that, in contrast to young adults, most elderly did not use motor chunks, had little explicit sequence knowledge, and remained highly dependent on external stimuli. Still, elderly did show sequence-specific learning with a 6-key sequence that can be explained by an associative learning mechanism.
Item Type:	Article
Copyright:	© 2010 Elsevier
Faculty:	Behavioural Sciences (BS)
Research Group:	Cognitive Psychology and Ergonomics (CPE)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/70518
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.02.001
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