Influences of Aging, Gender, and Handedness on Motor Performance of Upper and Lower Extremities

The purpose of this study was to collect reference data on different aspects of performance, including reaction time, speed of movement, tapping speed, and coordination of hands and feet using Human Performance Measurement/Basic Elements of Performance equipment and reports of reference data findings. Also, the reliability of the measurements is presented. 200 healthy, randomly selected subjects (100 men, 100 women; aged 21–70 years) were categorized by gender and by age decade into ten groups. The test battery consisted of six tests for both hands and feet. In general, the performance decreased clearly after 50 years in both genders. There were statistically significant differences between hands and feet, dominant and non-dominant sides, age groups, and number of choices, and especially between men and women.

[1]  H. Vanharanta,et al.  Bilaterally decreased motor performance of arms in patients with chronic tennis elbow. , 1997, Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

[2]  H. Vanharanta,et al.  The effect of strapping on the motor performance of the ankle and wrist joints , 1997, Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports.

[3]  Effects of Hot and Cold Packs on Motor Performance of Normal Hands , 1997 .

[4]  B Conrad,et al.  PC-based system for an objective quantification of manual movement disability for clinical and scientific purposes. , 1993, Journal of biomedical engineering.

[5]  R M Ruff,et al.  Gender- and Age-Specific Changes in Motor Speed and Eye-Hand Coordination in Adults: Normative Values for the Finger Tapping and Grooved Pegboard Tests , 1993, Perceptual and motor skills.

[6]  J. Jolles,et al.  Age-Related Decline of Psychomotor Speed: Effects of Age, Brain Health, Sex, and Education , 1993, Perceptual and motor skills.

[7]  I Biederman,et al.  Effects of Age and Sex on Reciprocal Tapping Performance , 1990, Perceptual and motor skills.

[8]  Aljoscha C. Neubauer,et al.  Selective reaction times and intelligence , 1990 .

[9]  R T Wilkinson,et al.  Age and simple reaction time: decade differences for 5,325 subjects. , 1989, Journal of gerontology.

[10]  P. Rabbitt,et al.  How does very prolonged practice improve decision speed , 1989 .

[11]  K. Widaman,et al.  Procedural effects on performance on the Hick paradigm: bias in reaction time and movement time parameters , 1989 .

[12]  S S Smith,et al.  Computerized system for quantitative measurement of sensorimotor aspects of human performance. , 1987, Physical therapy.

[13]  J. Fleiss The design and analysis of clinical experiments , 1987 .

[14]  Ali A. Landauer,et al.  Sex Differences in Decision and Movement Time , 1981 .

[15]  C. Dodrill Sex differences on the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery and on other neuropsychological measures. , 1979, Journal of clinical psychology.

[16]  J. Fleiss,et al.  Intraclass correlations: uses in assessing rater reliability. , 1979, Psychological bulletin.

[17]  P. Fitts The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. , 1954, Journal of experimental psychology.