Age-related differences in corrected and inhibited pointing movements

It has been widely reported that aging is accompanied by a decline in motor skill performance and in particular, it has been shown that older subjects take longer to adapt their ongoing reach in response to a target location shift. In the present experiment, we investigated the influence of aging on the ability to perform trajectory corrections in response to a target jump, but also assessed inhibition by asking a younger and an older group of participants to either adapt or stop their ongoing movement in response to a target location change. Results showed that although older subjects took longer to initiate, execute, correct and inhibit an ongoing reach, they performed both tasks with the same level of accuracy as the younger sample. Moreover, the slowing was also observed when older subjects were asked to point to stationary targets.