Abstract
Previously, we measured perceptuo-motor learning rates across the lifespan and found a sudden drop in learning rates between ages 50 and 60, called the “50s cliff.” The task was a unimanual visual rhythmic coordination task in which participants used a joystick to oscillate one dot in a display in coordination with another dot oscillated by a computer. Participants learned to produce a coordination with a 90° relative phase relation between the dots. Learning rates for participants over 60 were half those of younger participants. Given existing evidence for visual motion perception deficits in people over 60 and the role of visual motion perception in the coordination task, it remained unclear whether the 50s cliff reflected onset of this deficit or a genuine decline in perceptuo-motor learning. The current work addressed this question. Two groups of 12 participants in each of four age ranges (20s, 50s, 60s, 70s) learned to perform a bimanual coordination of 90° relative phase. One group trained with only haptic information and the other group with both haptic and visual information about relative phase. Both groups were tested in both information conditions at baseline and post-test. If the 50s cliff was caused by an age dependent deficit in visual motion perception, then older participants in the visual group should have exhibited less learning than those in the haptic group, which should not exhibit the 50s cliff, and older participants in both groups should have performed less well when tested with visual information. Neither of these expectations was confirmed by the results, so we concluded that the 50s cliff reflects a genuine decline in perceptuo-motor learning with aging, not the onset of a deficit in visual motion perception.
Highlights
Perceptuo-motor learning of coordinated actions is important at all ages
Coates et al [21] had investigated changes in perceptuo-motor learning rates with aging. They tested participants in their 20s compared with participants over 60 (60s, 70s, and 80s) using the visual unimanual rhythmic coordination task
Coates et al [22] were unsure whether the 50s cliff reflected a genuine decline in perceptuo-motor learning rates as a function of age or whether instead, it reflected a deficit in visual motion perception that emerges with aging
Summary
Perceptuo-motor learning of coordinated actions is important at all ages. As children, we learn to perform the perceptuo-motor coordinations involved in daily tasks like dressing, eating, PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0121708 April 13, 2015. Coates et al [21] studied age differences in learning rates They investigated perceptuo-motor learning of a 90° relative phase in a visual unimanual coordination task and measured the learning rates of participants in their 20s compared with participants in their 70s and 80s. We used bimanual coordination tasks because they entailed the learning of a rhythmic coordination with a 90° relative phase without requiring use of visual information to guide the movements Both tasks included non-visual haptic (and kinesthetic) information about the coordinative movement being produced as participants grasped each of two joysticks and moved them. If a deficit in visual motion perception had been responsible for the 50s cliff found in the previous study, we expected superior perceptuo-motor learning by older participants who performed the purely haptic bimanual coordination task. Especially if participants trained with both visual and haptic information, performance might be expected to be better with the availability and use of visual information
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