Developmental improvements in reaching correction efficiency are associated with an increased ability to represent...

Area of Science:

• Motor control and development
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Human movement science

Background:

• Online reaching corrections are crucial for accurate movements.
• Action representation, the internal model of movement, is thought to underpin motor control.
• Developmental changes in motor skills are well-documented, but the underlying representational changes are less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between developmental changes in online reaching correction efficiency and action representation.
• To determine if motor imagery ability, a proxy for action representation, predicts reaching efficiency across different age groups.

Main Methods:

• Participants aged 6-24 years completed a double-step reaching paradigm to assess online correction efficiency.
• A motor imagery task was administered to evaluate action representation abilities.
• Regression analyses were used to examine the predictive relationship between imagery ability and reaching efficiency across development.

Main Results:

• Performance improvements in both reaching and motor imagery showed similar nonlinear developmental trajectories.
• Substantial gains in reaching efficiency were observed around ages 6-7, with slower, incremental improvements thereafter.
• Motor imagery ability significantly predicted online reaching efficiency, with this relationship remaining consistent across all age groups.

Conclusions:

• Developmental improvements in online reaching control are partly predicted by enhanced action representation.
• The findings suggest that advancements in internal action models contribute to more efficient online motor adjustments throughout childhood and adolescence.
• This study provides the first empirical evidence linking the development of action representation to online reaching correction efficiency.