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Aging and longitudinal change in perceptual-motor skill acquisition in healthy adults
Author(s)Karen M Rodrigue, Kristen M Kennedy, Naftali Raz
Journal titleJournals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 60B, no 4, July 2005
Pagespp P174-P181
Sourcehttp://www.geron.org
KeywordsMental speed ; Learning capacity ; Mental ageing ; Older people ; Adults ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America.
AnnotationKnowledge about ageing of perceptual motor skills is based almost exclusively on cross-sectional studies. The authors examined age-related changes in the retention of mirror tracing skills in healthy adults who practised for 3 separate days at baseline and retrained 5 years later at follow-up. Overall, speed and accuracy of an acquired skill were partially retained after a 5-year interim, although the same asymptote was reached. Analyses with individual learning curves indicated that the effects of age on mirror tracing speed were greater at follow-up than at baseline, with older people requiring more training to reach asymptote. Thus, although the long-term retention of acquired skills declines with age, older people still retain the ability to learn the skill. Moreover, those who maintained a processing speed comparable with that of the younger participants evidenced no age-related decline in performance on the mirror drawing task. (RH).
Accession NumberCPA-051121213 A
ClassmarkDG: DE: D6: B: SD: 3J: 7T

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