Age-related changes in smooth pursuit initiation.

Quantitative analysis of eye movements is a useful tool for examining the behavioural effects of ageing. Although the effect of ageing on saccadic eye movement has been examined in some detail, the effect of ageing on a second class of eye movement, smooth pursuit (SP), has received less attention. We examined the initiation of SP in a group of fifteen healthy older people (mean age 72 years) and compared their performance with that of ten young controls (mean age 21 years).