Motor skill learning in the middle-aged: limited development of motor chunks and explicit sequence knowledge

Willem B Verwey, Elger L Abrahamse, Marit F L Ruitenberg, Luis Jiménez, Elian de Kleine

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

Abstract

The present study examined whether middle-aged participants, like young adults, learn movement patterns by preparing and executing integrated sequence representations (i.e., motor chunks) that eliminate the need for external guidance of individual movements. Twenty-four middle-aged participants (aged 55-62) practiced two fixed key press sequences, one including three and one including six key presses in the discrete sequence production task. Their performance was compared with that of 24 young adults (aged 18-28). In the middle-aged participants motor chunks as well as explicit sequence knowledge appeared to be less developed than in the young adults. This held especially with respect to the unstructured 6-key sequences in which most middle-aged did not develop independence of the key-specific stimuli and learning seems to have been based on associative learning. These results are in line with the notion that sequence learning involves several mechanisms and that aging affects the relative contribution of these mechanisms.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)406-22
Number of pages17
JournalPsychological Research = Psychologische Forschung: An international journal of perception, learning and communication
Volume75
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age Factors
  • Aging/physiology
  • Aptitude/physiology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Knowledge
  • Male
  • Motor Skills/physiology
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Psychomotor Performance/physiology
  • Reaction Time/physiology
  • Serial Learning/physiology

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