Older adults can learn to learn new motor skills

Abstract

Many studies have demonstrated that aging is associated with declines in skill acquisition. In the current study, we tested whether older adults could acquire general, transferable knowledge about skill learning processes. Older adult participants learned five different motor tasks. Two older adult control groups performed the same number of trials, but learned only one task. The experimental group exhibited faster learning than that seen in the control groups. These data demonstrate that older adults can learn to learn new motor skills.

Figure 1

Panel A: Gain adaptation performance is presented for the ML and GL groups; the young adult GL data (averaged for each block) from Seidler (2004) is provided as a reference. BL refers to baseline blocks with the normal feedback display; G refers to the gain adaptation blocks; block numbers are as in Table 2. The first point of each block presents group mean performance for the first trial; subsequent symbols are the mean across three trials. The free floating symbols reflect the mean for each previous block; error bars are standard deviations across participants. Both the older adult GL and ML groups show an increase in error when the gain change is first introduced (block 3 versus 2). The GL group shows little or no performance modulation across trials or blocks, however, while the ML group shows decreasing errors with practice during the first block. Panel B: Sequence learning performance is presented for the ML and SL groups; the young adult SL data from Seidler (2004) is provided as a reference. R refers to blocks in which the target locations appeared in a random fashion; S refers to the sequence learning blocks; block numbers are as in Table 2. RTs were averaged across trials and participants for each block; error bars are standard deviations across participants. The OA ML group exhibits learning, reflected as faster RTs, within the first sequence learning block while the OA SL group does not. However, both groups exhibit a comparable amount of acquired sequence knowledge (reflected as faster RTs for the last S block than the subsequent R block, comparison indicated by *) by the end of practice.