The Journal of Experimental Psychology has recently published a study which shows the ways that older people adapt once they have lost some of their freedom of movement.
It is thought that the study will help find ways to improve the treatment of patients who have lost some motor skills after suffering a medical problem, such as a stroke.
Aging is also something that causes the body to have less precise and slower movements. This is something that is known to affect driving and the study looks at a comparison between young people and people who are over 60 years old.
The participants were given a touchscreen computer and asked to trace lines at different speeds. They were also put into a driving simulator and put through several tests. It was found that the older group of people decided to go for strategies that placed in the middle-of-the-road.
When they were tracing, this meant that their lines stayed well within the target lines. The younger people were more likely to cut corners in order to increase speed, meaning they sometimes traced away from the line.
When they were put in the driving simulator and asked to drive at speed, people of all ages cut corners. Rachel Raw, the postgraduate research student and author of the study commented, “What this study has shown is that as people get older they begin to adjust their movement in order to compensate for declining skills.
“The problem is that this compensation only works to a certain extent. When driving conditions become more complicated these strategies begin to fail and the older people become a greater risk on the road”.
Richard Wilkie is a psychology researcher who supervised the study and he commented, “By researching how older people drive, we can improve the safety of the roads. This study shows that as people get older the amount of skill declines but it also applies to people who have suffered something like a stroke. This research will help to create more targeted treatment methods that will allow people to drive more safely in the future”.
