Changes in response time and accuracy of laterality recognition tasks according to the age in healthy subjects: a cross-sectional study

Objectives: The main objective of this study was to evaluate the laterality recognition of the body parts “hands”, “neck” and “feet” based on the response time and accuracy of left/right body-part judgments with performance compared across three age groups. The secondary objective was to calculate within age correlations between the time and accuracy variables and a measure of physical activity that provides activity in metabolic equivalents [METs]), and the METs score. Methods: A total sample of 154 healthy subjects was divided into three age groups: G1 (n = 58), G2 (n = 38), and G3 (n = 58). Response time and accuracy were measured with the application Recognise designed by the NOI Group for “hand”, “neck” and “feet” images. Results: The results showed significant changes between groups in accuracy and response time for all body parts. Post-hoc analysis revealed longest response time and worst accuracy for G3. In the correlation with METs analysis, the strongest correlations were found in G1, where there was a positive moderate association between the METs score and the accuracy for the right-hand images (r = 0.352) and right neck images (r = 0.398). Conclusion: Body-part laterality recognition is altered with age. Longer response time and lower accuracy was observed for “hands”, “neck” and “feet”.