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Representing others’ actions: the role of expertise in the aging mind

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Abstract

A large body of evidence suggests that action execution and action observation share a common representational domain. To date, little is known about age-related changes in these action representations that are assumed to support various abilities such as the prediction of observed actions. The purpose of the present study was to investigate (a) how age affects the ability to predict the time course of observed actions; and (b) whether and to what extent sensorimotor expertise attenuates age-related declines in prediction performance. In a first experiment, older adults predicted the time course of familiar everyday actions less precisely than younger adults. In a second experiment, younger and older figure skating experts as well as age-matched novices were asked to predict the time course of figure skating elements and simple movement exercises. Both young age and sensorimotor expertise had a positive influence on prediction performance of figure skating elements. The expertise-related benefit did not show a transfer to movement exercises. Together, the results suggest a specific decline of action representations in the aging mind. However, extensive sensorimotor experience seems to enable experts to represent actions from their domain of expertise more precisely even in older age.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Michaela Boldt, Felix Schneeweiß, Bettina Schnabel, Hans-Joachim Gehre, Luise Albrecht, Nils Ehlers, as well as Ingeburg Böhm and the athletes from the USG Chemnitz e. V., Olivia Dittrich and Martin Rappe, for their participation and invaluable help in developing the stimulus material for the experiments, Tanja Schorch for her great assistance in organizing the data collection, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstr. 1A, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Nadine Diersch, Emily S. Cross, Waltraud Stadler, Simone Schütz-Bosbach & Martina Rieger

  2. MaxNetAging Research School, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

    Nadine Diersch

  3. Behavioral Science Institute, Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Emily S. Cross

  4. Wales Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Bangor University, Gwynedd, UK

    Emily S. Cross

  5. Movement Science Unit, Faculty for Sports and Health Science, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany

    Waltraud Stadler

  6. UMIT-The Health and Life Sciences University, Hall/Tyrol, Austria

    Martina Rieger

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  1. Nadine Diersch
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Correspondence to Nadine Diersch.

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Diersch, N., Cross, E.S., Stadler, W. et al. Representing others’ actions: the role of expertise in the aging mind. Psychological Research 76, 525–541 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-011-0404-x

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