Age-Related Differences in Performance Using a Mouse and Trackball

1998 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bohan ◽  
Alex Chaparro
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Motor Control ◽  
Performance Measures ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Target Characteristics

Aging is marked by changes in motor control which may be expected to affect performance using computer pointing devices. In this experiment, we compared older and younger adults' ability to acquire on-screen targets of varying distance and size using a mouse and trackball. The older adults moved consistently slower than their younger counterparts with both devices, particularly when making large amplitude movements. Error rates were equivalent for both age groups across all conditions. Analysis of throughput values indicated a significant interaction between age and device in which the younger adults' performance was more degraded when using the trackball than the mouse, while the older adults' performance did not vary across devices. These results are discussed in terms of potential error-averse strategies employed by the older participants in an attempt to compensate for age-related declines in motor control. Although the performance measures obtained in this study imply that older adults would perform equivalently using either the mouse or the trackball, it is not known whether these results generalize to other experimental conditions including different movement tasks, and target characteristics.

scholarly journals ANGER, LOVE, SADNESS: DO EMOTION WORDS HAVE THE SAME SEMANTIC MEANING ACROSS AGE-GROUPS?

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S841-S842
Author(s):  
Madeline J Nichols ◽  
Jennifer A Bellingtier ◽  
Frances Buttelmann
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Emotion Words ◽  
Emotion Word ◽  
Age Related

Abstract Every day we use emotion words to describe our experiences, but past research finds that the meanings of these words can vary. Furthermore, historical shifts in language use and experiential knowledge of the emotions may contribute to age-differences in what these emotion words convey. We examined age-related differences in the valence, arousal, and expression connoted by the words anger, love, and sadness. We predicted age-related differences in the semantic meanings of the words would emerge such that older adults would more clearly differentiate the positivity/negativity of the words, whereas younger adults would report higher endorsement for the conveyed arousal and expression. Participants included American and German older adults (N=61; mean age=68.98) and younger adults (N=77; mean age=20.77). Using the GRID instrument (Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, 2013), they rated each emotion word for its valence, arousal, and expression when used by a speaker of the participant’s native language. Across emotions and dimensions, older adults were generally more moderate in their understanding of emotion words. For example, German older adults rated anger and sadness as suggesting the speaker felt less bad and more good than the younger adults. American older adults rated love as connoting the speaker felt more bad and less good than younger adults. Arousal ratings were higher for German younger, as opposed to older, adults. Cultural differences were most pronounced for sadness such that German participants gave more moderate answers than American participants. Overall, our research suggests that there are age-related differences in the understanding of emotion words.

Comprehension of Explicit and Implicit Warning Information in Younger and Older Adults

2001 ◽  
Vol 45 (20) ◽  
pp. 1474-1478
Author(s):  
Holly E. Hancock ◽  
Arthur D. Fisk ◽  
Wendy A. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Text Comprehension ◽  
Safety Information ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Comprehensive Investigation ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Product Usage ◽  
Implicit Information ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Safe Product

Successful comprehension of warning text necessitates an ability to understand both explicitly stated safety information, as well as information about hazards and safe product usage that may be implied. Comprehension level for this type of text may vary across age groups as a function of normal age-related changes that may be experienced in memory and text comprehension in general. To date, there has been no comprehensive investigation of how well younger and older adults understand explicit and implicit information associated with actual product warnings. In the current study, 43 older and 42 younger adults read text from consumer product warnings and then rated the truth/falsity of statements containing information that was either explicitly stated or implied by the warnings. The results suggest both older and younger adults are able to recognize information that is explicitly associated with an actual product warning. However, they are less able to recognize information that can be inferred from warnings. These data also suggest that older adults perceive themselves to understand consumer warnings fairly well.

Age Affects Responses on the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ) by Adults with Minimal Audiometric Loss

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (02) ◽  
pp. 081-091 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Banh ◽  
Gurjit Singh ◽  
M. Kathleen Pichora-Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Clinically Normal ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Listening In Noise ◽  
Psychology Course

Background: Age-related declines in auditory and cognitive processing may contribute to the difficulties with listening in noise that are often reported by older adults. Such difficulties are reported even by those who have relatively good audiograms that could be considered “normal” for their age (ISO 7029-2000 [ISO, 2000]). The Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ; Gatehouse and Noble, 2004) is a questionnaire developed to measure a listener's self-reported ability to hear in a variety of everyday situations, such as those that are challenging for older adults, and it can provide insights into the possible contributions of auditory and cognitive factors to their listening difficulties. The SSQ has been shown to be a sensitive and reliable questionnaire to detect benefits associated with the use of different hearing technologies and potentially other forms of intervention. Establishing how age-matched listeners with audiograms “normal” for their age rate the items on the SSQ could enable an extension of its use in audiological assessment and in setting rehabilitative goals. Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to investigate how younger and older adults who passed audiometric screening and who had thresholds considered to be “normal” for their age responded on the SSQ. It was also of interest to compare these results to those reported previously for older listeners with hearing loss in an attempt to tease out the relative effects of age and hearing loss. Study Sample: The SSQ was administered to 48 younger (mean age = 19 yr; SD = 1.0) and 48 older (mean age = 70 yr, SD = 4.1) adults with clinically normal audiometric thresholds below 4 kHz. The younger adults were recruited through an introductory psychology course, and the older adults were volunteers from the local community. Data Collection and Analysis: Both age groups completed the SSQ. The differences between the groups were analyzed. Correlations were used to compare the pattern of results across items for the two age groups in the present study and to assess the relationship between SSQ scores and objective measures of hearing. Comparisons were also made to published results for older adults with hearing loss. Results: The pattern of reported difficulty across items was similar for both age groups, but younger adults had significantly higher scores than older adults on 42 of the 46 items. On average, younger adults scored 8.8 (SD = 0.6) out of 10 and older adults scored 7.7 (SD = 1.2) out of 10. By comparison, scores of 5.5 (SD = 1.9) have been reported for older adults (mean age = 71 yr, SD = 8.1) with moderate hearing loss (Gatehouse and Noble, 2004). Conclusions: By establishing the best scores that could reasonably be expected from younger and older adults with “normal” hearing thresholds, these results provide clinicians with information that should assist them in setting realistic targets for interventions for adults of different ages.

scholarly journals Event Centrality of Positive and Negative Autobiographical Memories in Older Adulthood

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 712-712
Author(s):  
Justina Pociunaite ◽  
Tabea Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Openness To Experience ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Middle Aged Adults ◽  
Positive Memories

Abstract Centrality of an event (CE) is a characteristic denoting how important a life experience is to one’s identity. Usually, positive memories are more central than negative ones in the community samples. Nevertheless, there is emerging evidence showing substantial individual differences in how one perceives CE. Especially regarding age, one could expect pronounced differences due to age-related changes in personal goals. In this study, we investigated how older adults differ from young and middle-aged adults. Apart from age, we tested whether personality traits such as neuroticism and openness to experience influence the CE ratings among age groups. The sample comprised of 363 German participants, age ranging from 18 to 89 (M=49.57, SD=17.087), 67.2 % of the sample were women. Using multilevel analysis, we found the CE of positive memories to be higher in all age groups. The CE of positive events significantly differed for older adults compared to younger adults but not to the middle-aged group. With respect to personality, neuroticism had an impact only on the CE of negative memories in younger and middle-aged adults. For older adults, neither neuroticism, nor openness to experience had an impact on CE ratings. This shows that while older adults significantly differ from younger adults in the CE of positive memories, other individual differences characteristics do not have an impact on the way older adults perceive memories as central to their identity.

scholarly journals Cognitive aging and verbal labeling in continuous visual memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 1196-1213
Author(s):  
Alicia Forsberg ◽  
Wendy Johnson ◽  
Robert H. Logie
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Age Related

Abstract The decline of working memory (WM) is a common feature of general cognitive decline, and visual and verbal WM capacity appear to decline at different rates with age. Visual material may be remembered via verbal codes or visual traces, or both. Souza and Skóra, Cognition, 166, 277–297 (2017) found that labeling boosted memory in younger adults by activating categorical visual long-term memory (LTM) knowledge. Here, we replicated this and tested whether it held in healthy older adults. We compared performance in silence, under instructed overt labeling (participants were asked to say color names out loud), and articulatory suppression (repeating irrelevant syllables to prevent labeling) in the delayed estimation paradigm. Overt labeling improved memory performance in both age groups. However, comparing the effect of overt labeling and suppression on the number of coarse, categorical representations in the two age groups suggested that older adults used verbal labels subvocally more than younger adults, when performing the task in silence. Older adults also appeared to benefit from labels differently than younger adults. In younger adults labeling appeared to improve visual, continuous memory, suggesting that labels activated visual LTM representations. However, for older adults, labels did not appear to enhance visual, continuous representations, but instead boosted memory via additional verbal (categorical) memory traces. These results challenged the assumption that visual memory paradigms measure the same cognitive ability in younger and older adults, and highlighted the importance of controlling differences in age-related strategic preferences in visual memory tasks.

scholarly journals I know your face but can’t remember your name: Age-related differences in the FNAME-12NL

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Enriquez-Geppert ◽  
J F Flores-Vázquez ◽  
M Lietz ◽  
M Garcia-Pimenta ◽  
P Andrés
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Associative Memory ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Age Effects ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Effects Of Aging

Abstract Objective The Face-Name Associative Memory test (FNAME) has recently received attention as a test for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. So far, however, there has been no systematic investigation of the effects of aging. Here, we aimed to assess the extent to which the FNAME performance is modulated by normal ageing. Method In a first step, we adapted the FNAME material to the Dutch population. In a second step, younger (n = 29) and older adults (n = 29) were compared on recall and recognition performance. Results Significant age effects on name recall were observed after the first exposure of new face-name pairs: younger adults remembered eight, whereas older adults remembered a mean of four out of twelve names. Although both age groups increased the number of recalled names with repeated face-name exposure, older adults did not catch up with the performance of the younger adults, and the age-effects remained stable. Despite of that, both age groups maintained their performance after a 30-min delay. Considering recognition, no age differences were demonstrated, and both age groups succeeded in the recognition of previously shown faces and names when presented along with distractors. Conclusions This study presents for the first time the results of different age groups regarding cross-modal associative memory performance on the FNAME. The recall age effects support the hypothesis of age-related differences in associative memory. To use the FNAME as an early cognitive biomarker, further subscales are suggested to increase sensitivity and specificity in the clinical context.

Perspective Switching in Young and Older Adults

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Martin ◽  
Jasmine Huang ◽  
Lori Matuschka ◽  
Marcus Meinzer
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Switch Cost ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Preceding Trial ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Perspective Switching

One aspect of visual perspective taking (VPT) is the ability to switch between perspectives associated with self and others. Attenuated inhibition of the egocentric perspective is thought to underlie perspective taking difficulties in older adults leading to impaired social function. 117 adults (50 older adults 55-79 years; 67 young adults 18-36 years) completed two visual perspective taking tasks. The first task measured perspective tracking and required participants to understand what can be seen from the egocentric or allocentric perspective. The second measured perspective taking and required understanding how objects are seen from the egocentric or allocentric perspective. Both tasks involved trials that were congruent or incongruent between the two perspectives in order to assess how the other perspective interferes with the task-relevant perspective. Trials were further separated into those that required switching (preceding perspective was different to current) or sticking (preceding perspective was the same). We show an egocentric switch cost during perspective tracking in younger adults thought to reflect inhibition of the default egocentric perspective in the preceding trial. However, this effect was not identified in older adults. Moreover, older adults showed greater interference from their own perspective when required to stick with the allocentric perspective. No age differences were identified during perspective taking with both age groups showing an egocentric switch cost and an allocentric stick cost. The results provide evidence for age-related changes in VPT that are dependent on the requirement to switch or stick perspectives. Increased egocentricity in older adults is apparent but dependent on the switch-related context.

Visual-Somatosensory Integration in Older Adults: Links to Sensory Functioning

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 397-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Dumas ◽  
Roee Holtzer ◽  
Jeannette R. Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Acuity ◽  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Stimulus Condition ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Somatosensory Sensitivity ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Psychiatric Conditions

Research investigating multisensory integration (MSI) processes in aging is scarce, but converging evidence for larger behavioral MSI effects in older compared to younger adults exists. The current study employed a three-prong approach to determine whether inherent age-related sensory processing declines were associated with larger (i.e., worse) visual-somatosensory (VS) reaction time (RT) facilitation effects. Non-demented older adults (; mean age = 77 years; 55% female) without any medical or psychiatric conditions were included. Participants were instructed to make speeded foot-pedal responses as soon as they detected visual, somatosensory, or VS stimulation. Visual acuity was assessed using the Snellen test while somatosensory sensitivity was determined using vibration thresholds. The aims of the current study were to: (1) replicate a reliable MSI effect; (2) investigate the effect of unisensory functioning on VS RT facilitation; and (3) determine whether sensory functioning combination groups manifested differential MSI effects. Results revealed a significant VS RT facilitation effect that was influenced by somatosensory sensitivity but not visual acuity. That is, older adults with poor somatosensory sensitivity demonstrated significantly larger MSI effects than those with intact somatosensory sensitivity. Additionally, a significant interaction between stimulus condition and sensory functioning group suggested that the group with poor visual acuity and poor somatosensory functioning demonstrated the largest MSI effect compared to the other groups. In summary, the current study reveals that worse somatosensory functioning is associated with larger MSI effects in older adults. To our knowledge, this is first study to identify potential mechanisms behind increased RT facilitation in aging.

scholarly journals Virtual Hand Illusion in younger and older adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 205566832110593
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Campos ◽  
Graziella El-Khechen Richandi ◽  
Marge Coahran ◽  
Lindsey E. Fraser ◽  
Babak Taati ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Tactile Feedback ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Localization Accuracy ◽  
Virtual Hand ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Introduction Embodiment involves experiencing ownership over our body and localizing it in space and is informed by multiple senses (visual, proprioceptive and tactile). Evidence suggests that embodiment and multisensory integration may change with older age. The Virtual Hand Illusion (VHI) has been used to investigate multisensory contributions to embodiment, but has never been evaluated in older adults. Spatio-temporal factors unique to virtual environments may differentially affect the embodied perceptions of older and younger adults. Methods Twenty-one younger (18–35 years) and 19 older (65+ years) adults completed the VHI paradigm. Body localization was measured at baseline and again, with subjective ownership ratings, following synchronous and asynchronous visual-tactile interactions. Results Higher ownership ratings were observed in the synchronous relative to the asynchronous condition, but no effects on localization/drift were found. No age differences were observed. Localization accuracy was biased in both age groups when the virtual hand was aligned with the real hand, indicating a visual mislocalization of the virtual hand. Conclusions No age-related differences in the VHI were observed. Mislocalization of the hand in VR occurred for both groups, even when congruent and aligned; however, tactile feedback reduced localization biases. Our results expand the current understanding of age-related changes in multisensory embodiment within virtual environments.

scholarly journals Assessing the Transferability of Physical Activity Type Detection Models: Influence of Age Group Is Underappreciated

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoda Allahbakhshi ◽  
Christina Röcke ◽  
Robert Weibel
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Behavioral Differences ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Level Walking ◽  
Age Related

Increasing the amount of physical activity (PA) in older adults that have shifted to a sedentary lifestyle is a determining factor in decreasing health and social costs. It is, therefore, imperative to develop objective methods that accurately detect daily PA types and provide detailed PA guidance for healthy aging. Most of the existing techniques have been applied in the younger generation or validated in the laboratory. To what extent, these methods are transferable to real-life and older adults are a question that this paper aims to answer. Sixty-three participants, including 33 younger and 30 older healthy adults, participated in our study. Each participant wore five devices mounted on the left and right hips, right knee, chest, and left pocket and collected accelerometer and GPS data in both semi-structured and real-life environments. Using this dataset, we developed machine-learning models to detect PA types walking, non-level walking, jogging/running, sitting, standing, and lying. Besides, we examined the accuracy of the models within-and between-age groups applying different scenarios and validation approaches. The within-age models showed convincing classification results. The findings indicate that due to age-related behavioral differences, there are more confusion errors between walking, non-level walking, and running in older adults’ results. Using semi-structured training data, the younger adults’ models outperformed older adults’ models. However, using real-life training data alone or in combination with semi-structured data generated better results for older adults who had high real-life data quality. Assessing the transferability of the models to older adults showed that the models trained with younger adults’ data were only weakly transferable. However, training the models with a combined dataset of both age groups led to reliable transferability of results to the data of the older subgroup. We show that age-related behavioral differences can alter the PA classification performance. We demonstrate that PA type detection models that rely on combined datasets of young and older adults are strongly transferable to real-life and older adults’ data. Our results yield significant time and cost savings for future PA studies by reducing the overall volume of training data required.

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