Older adults generalize their movements across walking contexts more than young during gradual and abrupt split-belt walking

Generalization of movements from experienced to novel situations is a critical aspect of motor learning. It has been demonstrated that the training period when a movement is learned influences the movement’s generalization to untrained situations. However, little is known about how healthy aging affects these processes. For example, young adults exhibit greater generalization of movements learned on a device (e.g. split-belt treadmill or robotic arm) to movements without it (e.g, overground walking or unconstrained reaching) when participants experience small vs. large perturbations on the training device. Here, we investigated whether a similar effect would be observed in older adults. To this end, we compared the generalization of split-belt adaptation to overground walking in older (75.9±4.8 years old) and young adults (24.7±5.9 years old) when adapted gradually (i.e., small perturbations) vs. abruptly (i.e., large perturbations). We found that both age groups adapted more to the abrupt condition compared to the gradual condition, which resulted in greater adaptation effects (i.e., aftereffects) on the treadmill in the abrupt than the gradual groups. We also found that older adults generalize more than young adults, regardless of the perturbation schedule (i.e., gradual or abrupt). Our results suggest that abrupt perturbations during adaptation do not limit the generalization of movement in older adults-perhaps because they are more likely to attribute them to their own faulty movements. These results suggest that large perturbations are better than small when training older clinical populations since abrupt disturbances would lead to more adaptation and generalization of corrected movements in older people.