Older and younger adults’ strategies in sensorimotor tasks: Insights from Fitts’ pointing task.

Abstract

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.

Strategic Variations in Fitts’ Task: Comparison of Healthy Older Adults and Cognitively Impaired Patients

“…Based on this methodology, we showed that these kinematic patterns fulfill the currently accepted criteria to empirically distinguish among strategies, namely: (a) main effect of strategies on collected measures (e.g., performance); (b) interaction effects between the strategy factor and one or several factors on strategy use and strategy performance; and (c) age-related differences in strategy use and performance (see Poletti et al, 2015). We empirically documented the usefulness of a strategy approach to further our understanding of processes underlying age-related changes in sensorimotor performance.…”

“…Recently, we have undertaken to extend this framework to the sensorimotor domain using the Fitts’ rapid-aiming task (Poletti et al, 2015, 2016). We made this choice since control processes used during aiming movement in Fitts’ task are representative of those used in several motor tasks (e.g., Abbs et al, 1984; Duysens and Van de Crommert, 1998; Collins and De Luca, 1993; Van de Crommert et al, 1998).…”

“…Finally, our results showed that older adults were slower than young adults whatever the strategies they used. Therefore, we concluded that, on the one hand, age-related differences in performance are associated with strategies that young and older participants used to perform the task (Poletti et al, 2015), and on the other hand, the alterations of executive functions (EFs), combined with greater processing demands to perform the task, resulted in age-related differences in strategy repertoire and strategy selection (Poletti et al, 2016). …”

Extraversion/Introversion and Age-Related Differences in Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff

“…4 Although FL has been shown to hold well for all ages, 3,4 age-related differences has been reported. Despite grown-ups of different age did not differ whether ID was manipulated through amplitude or width, 5 children and older people do seem to show higher slopes of the regression lines (ID x MT) when compared to young adults. 6,7 Children and elderly therefore appear to be more sensitive to changes in ID and this age-related sensitivity is one clue to believe that individual differences might influence SATO.…”

“…5 The combination of these age-related strategies with personality traits calls for further investigation.…”