Older adults tracked on-screen targets less accurately
A tracking experiment with 30 older and 28 younger adults found larger age-group differences when targets updated faster and participants could move their eyes freely.
Limit: The age-group comparison included only 30 older and 28 younger adults
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In a tracking experiment, 30 older adults (age 71, including 17 women) and 28 younger adults (age 21, including 17 women) used a joystick to track an on-screen target. Researchers varied how often the target’s position updated, from 1.5 to 240 times per second. Participants performed the task both with their eyes free to move and with their gaze fixed.
Older participants kept the cursor farther from the target and lagged farther behind it. Aligning the recorded hand and target movements in time did not remove the performance gap. Age-group differences were greater at faster target update rates and when participants could move their eyes freely. Men generally performed better than women in both age groups.
Why it matters
Using vision to guide hand movements matters for many everyday tasks. The authors interpreted the findings as evidence that age-related tracking decline involves both slower and less accurate coordination between vision and movement, particularly when eye movements are involved.
Caveats
The observational age-group comparison cannot establish that aging caused the differences. The results came from a screen-and-joystick task, not measurements of everyday activities.
