Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts approximately 7% of the population and is characterized by unexplained deficits in expressive and/or receptive components of language. A common procedural learning task, serial reaction time (SRT), has been used to develop models of the basis of DLD.…

Everyday task sequences, such as cooking, contain overarching goals (completing the meal), subgoals (prepare vegetables), and motor actions (chopping). Such tasks generally are considered hierarchical because superordinate levels (e.g., goals) affect performance at subordinate levels (e.g., subgoals and motor actions). However, there is debate as…

We examined the developmental differences in motor control and learning of a two-segment movement. One hundred and five participants (53 female) were divided into three age groups (7-8 years, 9-10 years and 19-27 years). They performed a two-segment movement task in four conditions (full vision, fully disturbed vision, disturbed vision in the…

In a previous study, we reported the first measurements of pre-movement and sensorimotor cortex activity in preschool age children (ages 3-5 years) using a customized pediatric magnetoencephalographic system. Movement-related activity in the sensorimotor cortex differed from that typically observed in adults, suggesting that maturation of cortical…

We examined the factors that influence ocular fixation control in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) including sensory information, individuals' motor characteristics, and inhibitory control. The ASD group showed difficulty in maintaining fixation especially when there was no fixation target. The fixational eye movement characteristics of…

Adults can integrate multiple sensory estimates to reduce their uncertainty in perceptual and motor tasks. In recent studies, children did not show this ability until after 8 years. Here we investigated development of the ability to integrate vision with proprioception to localize the hand. We tested 109 4- to 12-year-olds and adults on a simple…

Background: Temporal information processing (TIP) underlies many aspects of cognitive functions like language, motor control, learning, memory, attention, etc. Millisecond timing may be assessed by sequencing abilities, e.g. the perception of event order. It may be measured with auditory temporal-order-threshold (TOT), i.e. a minimum time gap…

Inhibition is a core executive function reliant on the frontal lobes that shows protracted maturation through to adulthood. We investigated the spatiotemporal characteristics of response inhibition during a visual go/no-go task in 14 teenagers and 14 adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and a contrast between two no-go experimental conditions…

This study investigated how infants perceive and interpret human body movement. We recorded the eye movements and pupil sizes of 9- and 12-month-old infants and of adults (N = 14 per group) as they observed animation clips of biomechanically possible and impossible arm movements performed by a human and by a humanoid robot. Both 12-month-old…

The aim of this study was to investigate the development of multisensory facilitation in primary school-age children under conditions of auditory noise. Motor reaction times and accuracy were recorded from 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults during auditory, visual, and audiovisual detection tasks. Auditory signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of 30-,…

Three auditory identification experiments were designed to specify the prime-response retrieval model of negative priming (S. Mayr & A. Buchner, 2006), which assumes that the prime response is retrieved in ignored repetition trials and interferes with probe responding. In Experiment 1, shortly before (in Experiment 1A) or after (in Experiment 1B)…

Aim: This study investigated the nature of coordination and control problems in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Method: Seven adults (two males, five females, age range 20-28y; mean 23y, SD 2y 8mo) and eight children with DCD (six males, two females, age range 7-9y; mean 8y, SD 8mo), and 10 without DCD (seven males, three…

The aim of this study was to investigate whether and which aspects of a concurrent motor activity can facilitate children's and adults' performance in a dynamic imagery task. Children (5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds) and adults were asked to tilt empty glasses, filled with varied amounts of imaginary water, so that the imagined water would reach the rim.…

Motor influences on the mental transformation of body parts have been observed in both children and adults. Previous findings indicated that these influences were more pronounced in children than in adults, suggesting a stronger link between motor processes and imagery in children. The present series of two experiments casts doubt on the general…

The ability to select an appropriate motor response by resolving competition among alternative responses plays a major role in cognitive performance. fMRI studies suggest that the development of this skill is related to the maturation of the frontal cortex that underlies the improvement of motor inhibition abilities. However, fMRI cannot…