Developing movement efficiency between 7 and 9 years of age

This longitudinal study examined the movement efficiency of typically developing children between 7 and 9 years of age by scrutinizing their movement amplitudes and frequencies as they settled into a loop-writing task in which both parameters were prescribed. It was hypothesized that during the first three grades at primary school children would show increasing efficiency in exploiting the inverse relationship between movement amplitude and frequency when adjusting their movement errors. Whereas a clear developmental trend showed increasing efficiency with respect to the way in which the primary school children met the amplitude constraints, a more variable pattern was found for the age-dependent adjustments to the frequency requirements. At the level of parameter-error corrections from one cycle to the next, a marginal developmental trend was observed. Results are discussed in terms of contrasting effects between educational targets and movement-efficiency principles.