Sensorimotor difficulties are common in children with autism spectrum disorder, and it has been suggested that motor planning problems underlie their atypical movements. At early school-age, motor planning development typically involves changes in visuomotor integration, a function known to be affected in autism spectrum disorder. However, there…

Previous studies demonstrated that dual-task impairments are higher in children than in young adults. A previous study systematically assessed the sources of these larger dual-task impairments by identifying age-related differences in capacity limitations during dual-task processing. Capacity limitations in central cognitive processes were present…

Manual dexterity is known to gradually progress with developmental age. In this study, we evaluate the performance of unimanual and bimanual actions under perturbed and unperturbed conditions in children between 4 and 10 years of age. Behavior was assessed by means of trajectory measurements and degree of bimanual coupling. The results showed that…

Age-related increases of speaking rate are not fully understood, but have been attributed to gains in biologic factors and learned skills that support speech production. This study investigated developmental changes in speaking rate and articulatory kinematics of participants aged 4 ("N" = 7), 7 ("N" = 10), 10…

Few studies have explored the development of response selection processes in children in the case of object manipulation. In the current research, we studied the "end-state comfort effect," the tendency to ensure a comfortable position at the end rather than at the beginning of simple object manipulation tasks. We used two versions of the…

Investigated mechanisms underlying age-related differences in information processing for production of motor responses, especially development of feedforward mechanisms. Studied 6-, 8-, 10-, and 22-year olds under two conditions: without advance information on movement to be made, and with advanced information on movement. Found beyond 6 years of…

A battery of four tasks which measure the interhemispheric transfer of information was utilized to test the hypothesis that there will be an increase in efficiency of interhemispheric transfer with increasing age. (MP)

The developing directional preferences in writing and drawing that were observed in subjects between four years of age and adulthood suggest that two semiindependent motor systems are involved in writing: one for rapid and nonfigurative tasks, the other--which occurs later--for precision and symbolic functions. (Author/GT)