Poletti Céline, Sleimen-Malkoun Rita, Temprado Jean-Jacques, Lemaire Patrick
Aix-Marseille Université
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2015 Apr;41(2):542-55. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000033. Epub 2015 Mar 9.
We investigated how young and older adults differ in sensorimotor tasks. Two groups of participants (young and older adults) performed discrete Fitts' tasks in which 4 levels of difficulty (ID) were used, resulting from either the manipulation of the size of the target (ID(W)) or of the distance between home and target positions (ID(D)). Kinematic analysis allowed distinguishing 4 different types of strategies used to reach the target, on the basis of the existence and the nature of submovements. Results showed that the repertoire of strategies was significantly smaller in older than in young participants. In addition, the frequency of use of the different strategies varied with participants' age. Specifically, the most frequent strategies used by older participants included submovements, while those used by young participants did not include submovements. The differences observed between young and older adults were independent of whether ID was manipulated via target size or movement distance. Finally, age-related differences in strategy performance were found. These results have important implications for furthering our understanding of aging effects in sensorimotor tasks. They also illustrate the usefulness of a strategy approach in a domain where it had never been formally used before.
我们研究了年轻人和老年人在感觉运动任务中的差异。两组参与者（年轻人和老年人）执行离散的菲茨任务，其中使用了4种难度水平（ID），这是通过操纵目标大小（ID（W））或起始位置与目标位置之间的距离（ID（D））产生的。运动学分析能够根据子运动的存在和性质，区分出用于到达目标的4种不同类型的策略。结果表明，与年轻参与者相比，老年参与者的策略库明显更小。此外，不同策略的使用频率随参与者年龄而变化。具体而言，老年参与者最常使用的策略包括子运动，而年轻参与者使用的策略则不包括子运动。年轻人和老年人之间观察到的差异与ID是通过目标大小还是运动距离来操纵无关。最后，发现了策略表现方面与年龄相关的差异。这些结果对于深化我们对感觉运动任务中衰老效应的理解具有重要意义。它们还说明了策略方法在一个以前从未正式使用过的领域中的有用性。
