Haywood K M
Exp Aging Res. 1980 Oct;6(5):451-62. doi: 10.1080/03610738008258380.
Improvement in response speed through young adulthood and decline in older adulthood has been consistently demonstrated. There is indication of a similar trend in coincidence-anticipation accuracy, wherein the performer predicts the arrival of a moving stimulus at a target point, although performance appears to plateau earlier and performance by older adults has not been studied. Four age groups, 7-9, 11-13, 18-32, and 60-75 years, were observed on a coincidence-anticipation task requiring a thumb-press response and on a maximal response-time task. Speeds of the sequential-light stimulus of the former were 2 through 5 MPH. While findings confirmed age trend in response speed, only the youngest children performed significantly poorer than the others in coincidence-anticipation accuracy. More variable or less accurate performance at extreme stimulus speeds characterized this youngest group. A more sedentary group of adults, 64 to 86 years, was tested in a follow-up experiment. The analysis indicated that older adults showed little directional bias but performed less accurately and more variably than young adults.
在青年期反应速度不断提高，而在成年后期则有所下降，这一点已得到反复证实。有迹象表明，在同时发生预期准确性方面也存在类似趋势，即参与者预测移动刺激物到达目标点的情况，不过，表现似乎更早趋于平稳，而且尚未对老年人的表现进行研究。研究人员观察了四个年龄组（7至9岁、11至13岁、18至32岁和60至75岁）在一项需要拇指按压反应的同时发生预期任务和一项最大反应时间任务中的表现。前一项任务中连续光刺激的速度为每小时2至5英里。虽然研究结果证实了反应速度方面的年龄趋势，但在同时发生预期准确性方面，只有最年幼的儿童表现明显比其他儿童差。这个最年幼的群体在极端刺激速度下表现得更不稳定或准确性更低。在后续实验中，对一组年龄在64至86岁、久坐不动的成年人进行了测试。分析表明，老年人几乎没有方向偏差，但与年轻人相比，表现不够准确，且变化更大。
