Reward as a Gas Pedal: Why It Gets Harder to Press with Age
A banknote taped to the finish line makes your hand fly faster. In the lab, that banknote was replaced with a 50-pence coin, and the finish line with a target on a screen. The researchers recruited 28 young people and 28 older adults, seated them at a robot handle, and asked them to steer a cursor toward the target. Sometimes they were paid for speed and accuracy, sometimes not.