Interferência de tarefas motoras com diferentes demandas de processamento sobre o tempo de reação de idosos e adultos jovens

Abstract

During elderly the sensorial, nervous and muscular Systems are functioning in a different manner. As a consequence alterations can occur in motor performance mainly in old adults. The factors associated with this alterations are the information processing decline that are directly related to performance of attention demand activities as the motor sensory ones and some capabilities as the reaction time RT . The reaction time is the interval between the presentation of a stimulus and the beginning of the reaction. Because of the declines related to elderly and the importance of RT to motor performance, the aim of the present study were: a investigate the RT of young and old adults in two experimental conditions: just after the performance of three motor tasks with different processing demand RT1 and without the performance of any attention demanding task RT2 and b verify if RT was different between groups of old and young adults. Thirty young adults age M=22,7 e SD=1,3 years and thirty four old adults age M=67,9 e SD=5,7 years participated in this study. For the performance or RT task with two choices we used the Software Reaction Time v.1.0 – http://okazaki.webs.com . The results revealed significant difference for group factor F1,62 = 14,176, p=0,0001 and demand factor F1,62 = 4,053, p=0,048. These findings strengthen that for old adults the interference of processing demand on reaction speed were higher than young adults probably because the type of processing realizes for old adults.