What Does It Take to Play the Piano? Cognito-Motor Functions Underlying Motor Learning in Older Adults

Abstract

The acquisition of skills, such as learning to play a musical instrument, involves various phases that make specific demands on the learner. Knowledge of the cognitive and motor contributions during learning phases can be helpful in developing effective and targeted interventions for healthy aging. Eighty-six healthy older participants underwent an extensive cognitive, motoric, and musical test battery. Within one session, one piano-related and one music-independent movement sequence were both learned. We tested the associations between skill performance and cognito-motor abilities with Bayesian mixed models accounting for individual learning rates. Results showed that performance was positively associated with all cognito-motor abilities. Learning a piano-related task was characterized by relatively strong initial associations between performance and abilities. These associations then weakened considerably before increasing exponentially from the second trial onwards, approaching a plateau. Similar performance-ability relationships were detected in the course of learning a music-unrelated motor task. Positive performance-ability associations emphasize the potential of learning new skills to produce positive cognitive and motor transfer effects. Consistent high-performance tasks that demand maximum effort from the participants could be very effective. However, interventions should be sufficiently long so that the transfer potential can be fully exploited.

Keywords: cognition; motor sequence learning; performance–ability relationship; playing music; processing speed; skill; transfer; working memory.

Figure 1

Structure of the motor sequence tasks.

Figure 2

Piano-related (A) and piano-unrelated (B) motor sequence. The highlighted keys must be pressed alternately with the right and left hand as fast and accurately as possible.

Figure 3

Results of the confirmatory factor analysis. Abbreviations: BS_R, Corsi Block Span reversed; DSP_R, Digit Span reversed; DSP_F, Digit Span forward; DSP_S, Digit Span sequential; ZVT, Number Connection Test; TMT_A, Trail-Making-Test ascending; SS, Symbol Search; C, Coding; PP_A, Purdue Pegboard assembly; PP_B, Purdue Pegboard both hands; PP_L, Purdue Pegboard left hand; PP_R, Purdue Pegboard right hand; Click_B, Clicking speed alternating hands; Click_R, Clicking speed right hand; Click_L, Clicking speed left hand.

Figure 4

Total number of errors (left) and error rate (right) per trial. Each color represents one participant.

Figure 5

Absolute (left) and relative (right) number of gaze changes per trial. Each color represents one participant.

Figure 6

Performance of both sequence tasks, shown as raw data (left), as data fitted with exponential functions (middle) and as additionally normalized data for each trial separately (right). Performance of 17 randomly selected participants is shown. Each color represents one participant.

Figure 7

Performance-ability associations change over the learning period.