Abstract
Action perception and action production are tightly linked and elicit bi-directional influences on each other when performed simultaneously. In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in manual fine-motor competence and/or age affect the (interfering) influence of action production on simultaneous action perception. In a cross-sectional eye-tracking study, participants of a broad age range (N = 181, 20–80 years) observed a manual grasp-and-transport action while performing an additional motor or cognitive distractor task. Action perception was measured via participants’ frequency of anticipatory gaze shifts towards the action goal. Manual fine-motor competence was assessed with the Motor Performance Series. The interference effect in action perception was greater in the motor than the cognitive distractor task. Furthermore, manual fine-motor competence and age in years were both associated with this interference. The better the participants’ manual fine-motor competence and the younger they were, the smaller the interference effect. However, when both influencing factors (age and fine-motor competence) were taken into account, a model including only age-related differences in manual fine-motor competence best fit with our data. These results add to the existing literature that motor competence and its age-related differences influence the interference effects between action perception and production.
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Acknowledgements
While working on her dissertation, Stephanie Wermelinger was a pre-doctoral fellow of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE, http://www.imprs-life.mpg.de; participating institutions: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, University of Zurich). This project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant number: S-63216-03-01). We thank the editor and reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank Jannis Behr for his help with the data collection.
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This study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant number: S-63216-03-01).
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Wermelinger, S., Gampe, A. & Daum, M.M. Higher levels of motor competence are associated with reduced interference in action perception across the lifespan. Psychological Research 83, 432–444 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0941-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0941-z