Abstract
Kūsho, which refers to a behavior in which one moves the index finger as a substitute for a pen in the air or on a surface, mostly used when trying to recall the shape of a written character or the spelling of a word, has been known to facilitate cognitive task performance among kanji writing-system users. This study investigates whether the facilitative effect of kūsho, the existence of which has been exclusively confirmed in younger adults, is present in old age. Moreover, to further understand the interaction between finger movement and cognitive processing, we analyzed the correlation between the kūsho effect and factors such as age, mini-mental state examination (MMSE) score, and number of years of education. The kūsho effect was assessed by a task where participants mentally assembled a set of kanji subparts to form an actual character. The results showed a significant facilitative effect of kūsho and a strong negative correlation between kūsho effect and education. This study confirms the benefits of finger movement for solving cognitive tasks involving visual processing of written language among older adults and suggests the kūsho effect may be mediated by education.
Highlights
Aging is known to influence various areas of cognitive processing such as working memory [1], cognitive flexibility [2], inhibitory function [3], semantic memory [4], and certain aspects of language [5]
The present study aimed to investigate how aging influences the facilitative effect of finger movements known as kūsho on cognitive task performance among older Japanese adults
We confirmed that kūsho behavior improved cognitive task performance that required visual processing of written language
Summary
Aging is known to influence various areas of cognitive processing such as working memory [1], cognitive flexibility [2], inhibitory function [3], semantic memory [4], and certain aspects of language [5]. The present study aimed to investigate how aging influences the facilitative effect of finger movements known as kūsho on cognitive task performance among older Japanese adults. Kūsho is a behavior in which one moves the index finger as a substitute for a pen in the air or on a surface, mostly used when trying to recall the shape of a written character or the spelling of an English word; this behavior is mainly observed among people who use a Chinese character writing system (kanji) such as Chinese and Japanese people [6,7,8]. Based on a sample of Japanese young adults, previous studies found that visual feedback from kūsho behavior improved cognitive task performance for recalling the shapes of characters [9, 10].
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