As the proportion of people over 60 years of age rises continuously in westernized societies, it becomes increasingly important to better understand aging processes and how to maintain independence in old age. Fine motor tasks are essential in daily living and, therefore, necessary to maintain. This paper extends the existing literature on fine motor control by manipulating the difficulty of a force maintenance task to characterize performance optima for elderly. Thirty-seven elderly (M = 68.00, SD = 4.65) performed a force control task at dynamically varying force levels, i.e. randomly changing every 3 s between 10%, 20%, and 30% of the individual’s maximum voluntary contraction (MVC). This task was performed alone or with one or two additional tasks to increase task difficulty. The force control characteristics accuracy, variability, and complexity were analyzed. Lowest variability was observed at 20%. Accuracy and complexity increased with increasing force level. Overall, increased task difficulty had a negative impact on task performance. Results support the assumption, that attention control has a major impact on force control performance in elderly people. We assume different parameters to have their optimum at different force levels, which remain comparably stable when additional tasks are performed. The study contributes to a better understanding of how force control is affected in real-life situations when it is performed simultaneously to other cognitive and sensory active and passive tasks.

随着西方社会60岁以上人口比例不断上升，更好地了解衰老过程以及如何在晚年保持独立变得越来越重要。精细运动任务在日常生活中至关重要，因此有必要维持。本文通过操纵力量维持任务的难度来描述老年人的最佳表现，扩展了精细运动控制的现有文献。37 名老年人（M  = 68.00，SD = 4.65）以动态变化的力水平执行力控制任务，即每 3 秒在个体最大自主收缩（MVC）的 10%、20% 和 30% 之间随机变化。该任务单独执行或与一两个附加任务一起执行以增加任务难度。分析了力控制特性的准确性、可变性和复杂性。观察到的最低变异率为 20%。准确性和复杂性随着力量水平的增加而增加。总体而言，任务难度的增加对任务绩效产生负面影响。结果支持这样的假设：注意力控制对老年人的力控制表现有重大影响。我们假设不同的参数在不同的力水平下具有最佳值，当执行额外任务时，这些参数保持相对稳定。这项研究有助于更好地理解力控制在现实生活中与其他认知和感觉主动和被动任务同时执行时如何受到影响。