Mediation Analysis of the Effect of Visuospatial Memory on Motor Skill Learning in Older Adults

Abstract

There is high inter-individual variability in motor skill learning among older adults. Identifying the nature of these individual differences remains challenging due to interactions between participant characteristics (e.g., age, cognition) and task-related factors (e.g., nature of task, level of skill pre-training), making it difficult to determine plausibly causal relationships. This study addresses these competing explanations by using mediation analysis to examine plausible causal inference between visuospatial memory and one-month retention of both gross and fine motor components of a functional upper-extremity task following training. Results suggest that better visuospatial memory results in more retention of fine but not gross motor skill, expanding on previous correlational studies in older adults and informing future interventions for maximizing motor learning in geriatric populations.

Keywords:

• motor learning
• mediation analysis
• older adult
• visuospatial memory

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Jessica Trevino for her assistance in recruitment and data collection, and Dr. Peiyuan ‘Boki’ Wang for her assistance in preparing the kinematic data for analysis.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST

No author has any financial or business interests associated with the publishing of this paper.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The metadata used in this study will be made available upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (K01AG047926 to SYS, and F31AG062057 to JLV). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.