Increased practice of a standing motor sequence task in healthy young and healthy elders: Short communication

Sequence-specific learning (SSL); the ability to implicitly integrate repeated sequences compared to random sequences during a motor sequence paradigm, is impaired in healthy elders (HE) compared to healthy young (HY). Prior studies have provided limited practice (small repetitions and only 1 to 3 days).

Using a standing, postural control task we sought to assess if more practice (7 days) would remediate the differences observed in SSL for HE.

We used a continuous tracking task following a sinusoidal path of randomly presented random and repeated patterns. Root mean square error (RMSE) was the primary dependent variable, and the difference in RMSE between the random and repeated sequences was calculated to determine if SSL occurred.

Improvement in SSL was documented as a decreasing value of the mean repeated sequence and less or no change in the random sequence. Eight HY and 8 HE practiced the repeated sequences 420 times over 7 days. No differences were observed between the groups on cognition, balance, and mobility. HE did not demonstrate the ability to integrate the repeated sequence on day 1, but with increased practice, they integrated the repeated sequence similar to HY by the end of practice. The results of this study suggest that sustained practice over 7 days remediated differences in performance of a standing, implicit, sequence-specific task between HY and HE.

Clinically, it is important to provide individuals with sufficient practice amount to achieve integration of a standing task. Results suggest that older adults need more practice to demonstrate SSL.