Citation

Verwey WB. Acta Psychol. 2010; 134(2): 206-214.

Affiliation

Cognitive Psychology and Ergonomics, Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.02.001

PMID

20189547

Abstract

The present study examined whether elderly use motor chunks after practicing discrete keying sequences, just like young adults, or whether they perhaps learn these movement patterns in a different way. To that end, elderly (75-88) and young adults (18-28) practiced as part of the discrete sequence production (DSP) task two fixed series of three and six key presses. The results demonstrate that elderly did improve with practice but this improvement was largely sequence-unspecific. Detailed analyses showed that, in contrast to young adults, most elderly did not use motor chunks, had little explicit sequence knowledge, and remained highly dependent on external stimuli. Still, elderly did show sequence-specific learning with a 6-key sequence that can be explained by an associative learning mechanism.

Language: en