Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Age-Related Changes In Visual Spatial Performance, Samantha Farrell May 2017

Age-Related Changes In Visual Spatial Performance, Samantha Farrell

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Visual spatial skills allow individuals to understand the relationship between objects, people, and the environment for their everyday activities. Visual spatial abilities incorporate visual, motor, and cognitive components, each of which changes across the lifespan. The current study examined the effects of age-related changes and practice type on visual spatial performance. Participants between 40 and 79 years of age were asked to complete the Block Design Task (BDT) by using nine blocks to recreate various designs. Both accuracy and latency were measured to examine these changes. Task difficulty and practice type were varied and cognitive abilities were measured via MMSE …


Musical Expertise Has Minimal Impact On Dual Task Performance, Gianna Cocchini, Maria Serena Filardi, Marcela Crhonkova, Andrea R. Halpern Jan 2017

Musical Expertise Has Minimal Impact On Dual Task Performance, Gianna Cocchini, Maria Serena Filardi, Marcela Crhonkova, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Studies investigating effect of practice on dual task performance have yielded conflicting findings, thus supporting different theoretical accounts about the organisation of attentional resources when tasks are performed simultaneously. Because practice has been proven to reduce the demand of attention for the trained task, the impact of long-lasting training on one task is an ideal way to better understand the mechanisms underlying dual task decline in performance. Our study compared performance during dual task execution in expert musicians compared to controls with little if any musical experience. Participants performed a music recognition task and a visuo-spatial task separately (single task) …