Double-Step Adaptation of Saccadic Eye Movements Is Influenced by Priming with Age Stereotypies

Age related deficits of sensorimotor adaptation have been observed earlier with arm, but not with eye movements. Here we evaluate whether deficits of eye adaptation may depend on the subjects’ believes about their own sensorimotor abilities. To find out, elderly subjects were primed with positive or negative age stereotypes using the scrambled-sentence task, and were then exposed to a double-step saccade adaptation task. The outcome was compared to data from an earlier study with unprimed elderly persons. We found adaptation to be stronger after positive priming than after negative or no priming, with no difference between the latter two. Aftereffects of adaptation were not modified by priming. From this we conclude that positive primes enhanced workaround strategies, but not adaptive recalibration, while negative primes failed completely, possibly because of a floor effect.