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.