TY - JOUR
T1 - Differences in chunking behavior between young and older adults diminish with extended practice
AU - Barnhoorn, J. S.
AU - van Asseldonk, E. H.F.
AU - Verwey, W. B.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We thank Wai Ling Lam, Pia de Boer and Wouter de Vries for help with participant recruitment and testing. This research was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under contract number 464-13-157.
Funding Information:
Funding This study was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under contract number 464-13-157, this grant was awarded to authors W. B. Verwey and E. H. F. Van Assel-donk.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/3
Y1 - 2019/3
N2 - Previous research found reduced motor chunking behavior in older adults compared to young adults. However, it remains unclear whether older adults are unable to use a chunking strategy or whether they are just slower in developing them. Our goal was to investigate the effect of extended practice on the development of chunking behavior in healthy older adults. A group of young and a group of healthy older adults between 74 and 85 years of age visited the lab on 2 days. A sequence of 3 and a sequence of 6 elements were both practiced 432 times in a discrete sequence production task. We found that age differences in chunking behavior, as measured by the difference between initiation and execution of the sequence, diminish with extended practice. Furthermore, in older, but not in young adults, slow responses that are often interpreted as the first response of a next motor chunk were associated with a finger that was also slow during performance of the random sequences. This finding calls for more attention to biomechanical factors in future theory about aging and sequence learning.
AB - Previous research found reduced motor chunking behavior in older adults compared to young adults. However, it remains unclear whether older adults are unable to use a chunking strategy or whether they are just slower in developing them. Our goal was to investigate the effect of extended practice on the development of chunking behavior in healthy older adults. A group of young and a group of healthy older adults between 74 and 85 years of age visited the lab on 2 days. A sequence of 3 and a sequence of 6 elements were both practiced 432 times in a discrete sequence production task. We found that age differences in chunking behavior, as measured by the difference between initiation and execution of the sequence, diminish with extended practice. Furthermore, in older, but not in young adults, slow responses that are often interpreted as the first response of a next motor chunk were associated with a finger that was also slow during performance of the random sequences. This finding calls for more attention to biomechanical factors in future theory about aging and sequence learning.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85038632074&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00426-017-0963-6
DO - 10.1007/s00426-017-0963-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85038632074
SN - 0340-0727
VL - 83
SP - 275
EP - 285
JO - Psychological research = Psychologische Forschung
JF - Psychological research = Psychologische Forschung
IS - 2
ER -