Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 19, 2026
An Objective and Child-friendly Assessment of Arm Function by Using a 3-D Sensor
Published on: February 12, 2018
Development of forward models for hand localization and movement control in 6- to 10-year-old children
1Cognitive-Motor Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology, Graduate Programs in Bioengineering and Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, University of Maryland, 2363 HHP Building, College Park, MD 20742, USA. pepeum@umd.edu
Insights
Young children exhibit greater movement variability due to less stable hand localization representations. This impacts sensorimotor development and movement control in developing individuals.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Motor Control
Background:
- Sensorimotor development involves integrating sensory information with motor commands.
- Accurate hand localization is crucial for precise movement planning and execution.
- Young children often display increased variability in motor tasks compared to adults.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related differences in kinesthetic-to-visual matching during drawing movements.
- To examine the contribution of hand localization representations to movement errors in children and adults.
- To understand the developmental trajectory of sensorimotor control.
Main Methods:
- Participants (children aged 5-10 and young adults) performed a center-out drawing task without visual feedback of hand motion.
- Movement time (MT), terminal end-point position error (EPE), and initial directional error (IDE) were measured.
- Principal component analysis was used to characterize localization error distributions.
Main Results:
- Youngest children showed significantly larger end-point error variability and localization errors in extent and direction.
- Error distributions in children could not be explained by pre-movement localization inaccuracies.
- Movement variability did not differ between older children and young adults.
Conclusions:
- Increased movement variability in young children is linked to immature and unstable forward representations for hand localization.
- These findings highlight the role of internal representations in sensorimotor development.
- Developmental improvements in motor control involve both refined control mechanisms and stabilized internal models.
Abstract:
An active kinesthetic-to-visual matching task was performed by 15 children aged 5-10 years and five young adults. The task required the participants to locate the target visually while performing center-out drawing movements to the located visual targets in the absence of visual feedback of hand/pen motion. Movement time (MT), terminal end-point position error (EPE), and initial directional error (IDE) were measured. The general finding is that the end-point error variability, representing the joint localization probability distributions for proprioceptive localization of the hand and visual localization of the target, was largest for the youngest children, but did not differ from one another for the older age groups. The localization distributions, as characterized by principal component analysis, showed that both errors in extent and direction were significantly larger in the youngest children. These error distributions could not be accounted for by initial localization errors prior to movement onset in the children. It is likely that at least some portion of the increased movement variability seen during sensorimotor development in young children can be attributed not only to immature control mechanisms per se, but also to partial, not yet stable, forward representations for hand localization which are used for movement perception, planning, and control.
