Learning of a simple grapho-motor task by young children and adults: similar acquisition but age-dependent retention

Julius, Mona S.; Adi-Japha, Esther

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00225

Cited by 28 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…However, adults made the greatest improvement after practice in the fully disturbed vision condition, whilst younger children showed the least improvement after practice. These results are consistent with the findings that task complexity influences children's learning of motor skills (Adi‐Japha et al, ; Dorfberger, Adi‐Japha, & Karni, ; Julius & Adi‐Japha, ). Children's greater brain plasticity allowed them to benefit more from practice by changing the underlying structure of their movements.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Movement segmentation and visual perturbation increase developmental differences in motor control and learning

Chan

Jin

2019

Developmental Science

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We examined the developmental differences in motor control and learning of a two‐segment movement. One hundred and five participants (53 female) were divided into three age groups (7–8 years, 9–10 years and 19–27 years). They performed a two‐segment movement task in four conditions (full vision, fully disturbed vision, disturbed vision in the first movement segment and disturbed vision in the second movement segment). The results for movement accuracy and overall movement time show that children, especially younger children, are more susceptible to visual perturbations than adults. The adults’ movement time in one of the movement segments could be increased by disturbing the vision of the other movement segment. The children's movement time for the second movement segment increased when their vision of the first movement segment was disturbed. Disturbing the vision of the first movement segment decreased the percentage of central control of the second movement in younger children, but not in the other two age groups. The children's normalized jerk was more easily increased by visual perturbations. The children showed greater improvement after practice in the conditions of partial vision disturbance. As the participants’ age increased, practice tended to improve their feedforward motor control rather than their feedback motor control. These results suggest that children's central movement control improves with age and practice. We discuss the theoretical implications and practical significance of the differential effects of visual perturbation and movement segmentation upon motor control and learning from a developmental viewpoint.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Movement segmentation and visual perturbation increase developmental differences in motor control and learning

Chan

Jin

2019

Developmental Science

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“…It has been suggested that 5-year-olds, unlike 7-year-old children, cannot learn the task because they “cannot detect accurate movements and reproduce the same programming for the next movements” (Ferrel-Chapus et al, 2002 , p. 515). These findings stand in sharp contrast to 5-year-olds’ successful learning of a recently introduced simple grapho-motor task, the Invented Letter Task, in which direct visual feedback is afforded (Julius and Adi-Japha, 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 74%

A Developmental Perspective in Learning the Mirror-Drawing Task

Julius

Adi-Japha

2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Is there late maturation of skill learning? This notion has been raised to explain an adult advantage in learning a variety of tasks, such as auditory temporal-interval discrimination, locomotion adaptation, and drawing visually-distorted spatial patterns (mirror-drawing, MD). Here, we test this assertion by following the practice of the MD task in two 5 min daily sessions separated by a 10 min break, over the course of 2 days, in 5–6-year-old kindergarten children, 7–8-year-old second-graders, and young adults. In the MD task, participants were required to trace a square while looking at their hand only as a reflection in a mirror. Kindergarteners did not show learning of the visual-motor mapping, and on average, did not produce even one full side of a square correctly. Second-graders showed increased online movement control with longer strokes, and robust learning of the visual-motor mapping, resulting in a between-day increase in the number of correctly drawn sides with no loss in accuracy. Overall, kindergarteners and second-graders producing at least one correct polygon-side on Day 1 were more likely to improve their performance between days. Adults showed better performance with improvements in the number of correctly drawn sides between- and within-days, and in accuracy between days. It has been suggested that 5-year-olds cannot learn the task due to their inability to detect and encapsulate previously produced accurate movements. Our findings suggest, instead, that these children lacked initial, accurate performance that could be enhanced through training. Recently, it has been shown that in a simple grapho-motor task the three age-groups improved their speed of performance within a session and between-days, while maintaining accuracy scores. Taken together, these data suggest that children’s motor skill learning depends on the task’s characteristics and their adopting an efficient and mature performance strategy enabling initial success that can be improved through training.

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“…The proposal rather is that, in both populations, some added constraints are imposed on the selection of what is to be maintained in long-term memory after a given learning experience, compared to the constraints imposed on consolidation processes in typical young adults. Different constraints on consolidation processes (rather than differences in the capacity to learn or generate long-term procedural memory per se ) have also been indicated by recent studies addressing developmental effects in FOS consolidation, i.e., before and after puberty in typically developing individuals ( 20 , 29 , 103 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Procedural Memory Consolidation in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Is Promoted by Scheduling of Practice to Evening Hours

Korman¹,

Levy²,

Karni³

2017

Front. Psychiatry

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In young adults without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) training on a novel movement sequence results not only in large within-session (online) gains in task performance but also in additional (delayed, off-line) gains in the performance, expressed after an interval of sleep. In contrast, young people with ADHD, given an identical practice, were shown to improve online but expressed much smaller delayed gains overnight. As delayed gains in performance are taken to reflect procedural (“how to”) memory consolidation processes, this may explain skill learning deficits in persons with ADHD. However, motor training is usually provided in morning sessions, and, given that persons with ADHD are often evening types, chronobiological constraints may constitute a hidden factor. Here, we tested the hypothesis that evening training, compared to morning training, would result in larger overnight consolidation gains following practice on a novel motor task in young women with ADHD. Participants with (N = 25) and without (N = 24) ADHD were given training on a finger opposition sequence tapping task, either in the morning or at evening. Performance was assessed before and immediately after training, overnight, and at 2 weeks post-training. Individuals with ADHD reported a general preference for evening hours. Evening training was equally effective in participants with and without ADHD, both groups showing robust consolidation gains in task performance overnight. However, the ability to express delayed gains overnight was significantly reduced in participants with ADHD if trained in the morning. Typical peers were as effective in expressing overnight consolidation phase gains irrespective of the time-of-day wherein the training session was afforded. Nevertheless, even after morning training, participants with ADHD fully retained the gains acquired within the first 24 h over an interval of about 2 weeks. Our results suggest that procedural memory consolidation processes are extant and effective in ADHD, but require that specific biobehavioral conditions be met. The affordance of training in the evening hours can relax some of the constraints on these processes in ADHD. The current results are in line with the notion that the control of what is to be retained in procedural memory is atypical or more stringent in ADHD.

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Learning of a simple grapho-motor task by young children and adults: similar acquisition but age-dependent retention

Cited by 28 publications

References 58 publications

Movement segmentation and visual perturbation increase developmental differences in motor control and learning

Movement segmentation and visual perturbation increase developmental differences in motor control and learning

A Developmental Perspective in Learning the Mirror-Drawing Task

Procedural Memory Consolidation in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Is Promoted by Scheduling of Practice to Evening Hours

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