Sensory, psychomotor, and motor functions in men of different ages

As a part of a larger gerontological research project various sensory, psychomotor, and motor functions were studied in three samples of men aged 31-35, 51-55 and 71-75 years. The samples were randomly drawn from men living in the town of Jyväskylä on January the 1st 1981 and belonging to the actual cohorts. The sensory functions studied included static balance (postural sway during standing), vibrotactile sensitivity on the inner malleolus of the ankle, hearing (pure-tone thresholds at 125-8000 Hz and speech-understanding), and vision (dark adaptation and lens accommodation). The assessments of psychomotor and motor functions included simple and choice reaction and movement times (visual and auditory stimuli), tapping rate over 2.5 s and 5.0 s, and maximal knee extension velocity. Differences between the age groups in these functions were studied. In addition, within the age groups, the associations of sensory, psychomotor, and motor functions with health status, certain living habits, occupational and educational background, and cognitive functions were analyzed. Also their interrelations were analyzed. The results showed that the effect due to age group was evident in nearly all functions. The sensory functions worsened and psychomotor and motor speeds became slower when proceeding from younger to older age groups. When the interrelations of the functions were analyzed the main observation was the independence of the sensory measures of each other in all age groups. The only consistent associations between the indicators of different sensory modalities was observed between the extent of postural sway and vibrotactile sensitivity on the ankle. On the other hand, psychomotor speed showed associations with many of the sensory measures. Finally, in analyzing the clustering of poorer or better performances in many or most of the sensory, psychomotor, and motor functions within the age groups, it was observed that the better performers in these measures tended to have longer education, worked more often in managerial than in manual occupations, reported fewer occupational hazards and had better results in cognitive tests than the poorer performers. The overall status of health as expressed by the number of chronic diseases and self-rated health was associated with performance in these assessments only in the youngest group where those having more diseases had a lower level in these functions. The associations of certain health-related living habits (drinking, smoking, physical activity) with the functions were, as a whole, negligible.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)