TITLE:
Double-Step Adaptation of Saccadic Eye Movements Is Influenced by Priming with Age Stereotypies
AUTHORS:
Otmar Bock, Valentina Grigorova, Milena Ilieva
KEYWORDS:
Old Age; Plasticity; Strategies; Recalibration; Societal Stereotypies
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.4 No.12,
December
26,
2013
ABSTRACT: Age related
deficits of sensorimotor adaptation have been observed earlier with arm, but
not with eye movements. Here we evaluate whether deficits of eye adaptation may
depend on the subjects’ believes about their own sensorimotor abilities. To
find out, elderly subjects were primed with positive or negative age
stereotypes using the scrambled-sentence task, and were then exposed to a
double-step saccade adaptation task. The outcome was compared to data from an
earlier study with unprimed elderly persons. We found adaptation to be stronger
after positive priming than after negative or no priming, with no difference
between the latter two. Aftereffects of adaptation were not modified by
priming. From this we conclude that positive primes enhanced workaround
strategies, but not adaptive recalibration, while negative primes failed
completely, possibly because of a floor effect.