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Children's time production for concurrent nontemporal motor tasks.
Bernat Buscà1, Gerard Moras, Francisco Seirul-Lo
1Faculty of Psychology, Education Sciences and Sport Blanquerna, Universitat Ramon Llull, Spain. bernatbs@blanquerna.url.edu
Perceptual and Motor Skills
|April 7, 2011
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Motor control
- Human timing
Background:
- Internal clock models explain timing disruptions during dual-task performance.
- Simultaneous temporal and nontemporal tasks challenge timing accuracy.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess children's timing production while performing a walking task concurrently with varying cognitive and coordinative demands.
- To investigate the impact of attentional and cognitive load on motor timing in children.
Main Methods:
- Sixteen school-aged children performed an 8-meter walk in 8 seconds task.
- Participants completed six trials under five randomized conditions with differing secondary nontemporal task workloads.
- Cognitive and coordinative demands of secondary tasks were systematically varied.
Main Results:
- Timing duration increased with higher attentional and cognitive demands of concurrent tasks.
- Children demonstrated learning of timing over the six trials.
- Significant differences in timing were observed based on secondary task difficulty and cognitive load.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive load and attention significantly impact children's motor timing performance.
- Attention models effectively explain the observed effects on time estimation and production.
- Motor timing in children is susceptible to interference from concurrent cognitive tasks.
