Maze test: an instrument to evaluate age-related cognitive and motor changes in humans

Abstract

Changes in cognitive and motor ability performance due to advancing age can compromise daily activities. It is important to determine if the maze test can be sensitive to the cognitive or motor alterations of normal ageing. This, the aim of the study was to verify age-related differences in executive function, learning and short-time memory by means of the maze test. Participated 80 healthy individuals, 40 young people (22 ± 2 years) and 40 elderly individuals (67 ± 5 years), underwent a health and cognitive evaluation (Mini Mental State Examination). Participants were timed solving thirty mazes, and another 15 minutes later. The data were analyzed by ANOVA and multiple linear regression. The elderly subjects took longer to solve the mazes, suggesting difficulties in executive function; learning took place in the first trials and a short-time memory deficit occurred. A correlation was observed between the cognitive and maze test (r = -0.320; p = 0.003). Age was the only predictive factor of performance. It is suggested that the maze test may contribute to the monitoring of premature cognitive and motor alterations in the elderly.

Development and Evaluation of Maze-Like Puzzle Games to Assess Cognitive and Motor Function in Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases

“…However, our finding of age-group differences in MPT (i.e., subtracting the MET from the TST) replicates previous studies that showed age effects on maze solving ability (Koss et al, 1991;Krishnasamy and Unsworth, 2011;de Souza et al, 2013), even when controlling for motor processing speed. The age effect on maze solving ability has been suggested to reflect age-related difficulties in executive and visuoconstructive functioning (Krishnasamy and Unsworth, 2011;de Souza et al, 2013).…”

“…However, our finding of age-group differences in MPT (i.e., subtracting the MET from the TST) replicates previous studies that showed age effects on maze solving ability (Koss et al, 1991;Krishnasamy and Unsworth, 2011;de Souza et al, 2013), even when controlling for motor processing speed. The age effect on maze solving ability has been suggested to reflect age-related difficulties in executive and visuoconstructive functioning (Krishnasamy and Unsworth, 2011;de Souza et al, 2013). Interestingly, studies have suggested that executive deficits with aging are not general, but specifically affect planning ability that is usually measured using maze tasks (Zhang et al, 2007;Brandt et al, 2009) and strongly associated with everyday functioning in older age (Lewis and Miller, 2007).…”

“…Following previous findings using maze tasks, our study tests the hypothesis that NL game-based performance measures can be used to distinguish between age groups (de Souza et al, 2013) and between healthy controls and patients with HD (Montoya et al, 2006) and PD (Mimura et al, 2006). Based on our hypothesis that NL puzzles are similar to maze tasks, we propose that NL game-based performance measures are associated with performance on the Snellgrove Maze Task (SMT) and standard measures of visuomotor, visuospatial and constructional, executive, and global cognitive function (Snellgrove, 2005;Yew et al, 2011).…”

“…With regard to detecting age-related changes in cognitive and motor functioning, maze tasks represent a particularly promising addition to standardized cognitive assessments (de Souza et al, 2013). Mazes are complex visual-motor planning and problemsolving tasks that require finding a path from the start to the end of a maze as quickly as possible.…”

“…To date, maze tests have been used in some studies to assess cognitive and motor functioning and demonstrated sensitivity in differentiating healthy normal aging from either mild cognitive impairment (Zhang et al, 2007;de Souza et al, 2013), Alzheimer's dementia (Mack and Patterson, 1995), PD (Mimura et al, 2006), and HD (Deckel and Duffy, 2000;Montoya et al, 2006). Furthermore, maze task performance was shown as a strong predictor of everyday functioning ability in older adults (Mack and Patterson, 1995;Ott et al, 2003;Lewis and Miller, 2007;Staplin et al, 2013).…”