Fine motor skills including precise tactile and haptic perception are essential to the manipulation of objects. With increasing age, one's perception decreases; however, little is known about the state of touch perception in middle-aged adults. This study investigated the extent to which the decline in touch perception affects adults throughout their working life. In addition, the influence of work-related expertise on tactile and haptic perception was examined in an attempt to determine whether expertise, in the form of the frequent use of the fingers, affects perception and counters age-related losses. The study was conducted with subjects from three age groups (18-25, 34-46, and 54-65 years) with two levels of expertise. Expertise was classified by the subjects' occupations. Five sensory tasks of touch perception were conducted. The results confirmed age-related changes in tactile perception over the span of one's working life. Older workers were proven to have lower tactile performance than younger adults. However, middle-aged workers were hardly affected by the perception losses and did not differ significantly from younger adults. Work-related expertise was not proven to either affect tactile and haptic perception or counteract age-related declines. We conclude that the age-related decline gets steeper in the late working life and that specific work-related expertise does not lead to generally improved touch perception that would result in lower thresholds and improved performance in non-expertise specific tasks.

Whereas aerobic training has found to be beneficial for inhibitory control, less is known on the efficiency of other exercise types in children. The present study compared the effects of aerobic and coordinative training on behavioral and neurophysiological measures of inhibitory control. Forty-five children were randomly assigned (1:1:1 ratio) to groups performing aerobic training, coordinative training or assisted homework sessions over 10 weeks. Before and after intervention, all participants completed a Flanker task. The P300 component of event-related potentials elicited from the task was recorded via electroencephalography. Additionally, aerobic fitness and gross-motor skills were assessed using 20 m Shuttle Run and Heidelberg Gross-Motor Test, respectively. Statistical analyses revealed no time by group interactions for the P300 component (amplitude, latency), p = 0.976, η2 = 0.007, and behavioral performance (reaction time, accuracy), p = 0.570, η2 = 0.045. In contrast, there was a significant group-difference in pre- to post-test changes in aerobic fitness, p = 0.008, η2 = 0.246, with greater improvements following aerobic and coordinative training compared to assisted homework sessions. In conclusion, no differences regarding the efficiency of aerobic and coordinative training for the enhancement of inhibitory control were found as both exercise programs failed to elicit changes in speed and accuracy of stimulus evaluation and the allocation of attentional resources.

It has been repeatedly shown that precise finger force control declines with age. The tasks and evaluation parameters used to reveal age-related differences vary between studies. In order to examine effects of task characteristics, young adults (18-25 years) and late middle-aged adults (55-65 years) performed precision grip tasks with varying speed and force requirements. Different outcome variables were used to evaluate age-related differences. Age-related differences were confirmed for performance accuracy (TWR) and variability (relative root mean square error, rRMSE). The task characteristics, however, influenced accuracy and variability in both age groups: Force modulation performance at higher speed was poorer than at lower speed and at fixed force levels than at force levels adjusted to the individual maximum forces. This effect tended to be stronger for older participants for the rRMSE. A curve fit confirmed the age-related differences for both spatial force tracking parameters (amplitude and intercept) and for one temporal parameter (phase shift), but not for the temporal parameter frequency. Additionally, matching the timing parameters of the sine wave seemed to be more important than matching the spatial parameters in both young adults and late middle-aged adults. However, the effect was stronger for the group of late middle-aged, even though maximum voluntary contraction was not significantly different between groups. Our data indicate that changes in the processing of fine motor control tasks with increasing age are caused by difficulties of late middle-aged adults to produce a predefined amount of force in a short time.

Age-related decline of fine motor control commences even in middle adulthood. Less is known, however, whether age-related changes can be postponed through continuous practice. In this study we tested how age and professional expertise influence fine motor control in middle-aged adults. Forty-eight right-handed novices and experts (35 to 65 years) performed submaximal precision grip force modulation tasks with index or middle finger opposing the thumb, either with the right hand or the left hand. Novices revealed expected age-related differences in all performance measures (force initialization, mean applied force, variability), whereas experts outperformed novices in all outcome measures. Expertise seems to contribute to maintaining manual skills into older age, as indicated by the age and expertise interaction for the force initialization.

The ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information increases throughout childhood and decreases in older age. Here, we intended to investigate these opposing developmental trajectories, to assess whether gains and losses early and late in life are associated with similar or different electrophysiological changes, and to get a better understanding about the development in middle-adulthood. We (re-)analyzed behavioral and electrophysiological data of 211 participants, who performed a colored Flanker task while their Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Participants were subdivided into six groups depending on their age, ranging from 8 to 83 years. We analyzed response speed and accuracy as well as the event replated potential (ERP) components P1 and N1, associated with visual processing and attention, N2 as marker of interference suppression and cognitive control, and P3 as a marker of cognitive updating and stimulus categorization. Response speed and accuracy were low early and later in life, with peak performance in young adults. Similarly, ERP latencies of all components and P1 and N1 amplitudes followed a u-shape pattern with shortest latencies and smallest amplitudes occurring in middle-age. N2 amplitudes were larger in children, and for incongruent stimuli in adults middle-aged and older. P3 amplitudes showed a parietal-to-frontal shift with age. Further, group-wise regression analyses suggested that children’s performance depended on cognitive processing speed, while older adults’ performance depended on cognitive resources. Together these results imply that different mechanisms restrict performance early and late in life and suggest a non-linear relationship between electrophysiological markers and performance in the Flanker task across the lifespan.