Examining age-related movement representations for sequential (fine-motor) finger movements

Imagining handwriting movements in a usual or unusual position: effect of posture congruency on visual and kinesthetic motor imagery

Motor imagery has been used in training programs to improve the performance of motor skills. Handwriting movement may benefit from motor imagery training. To optimize the efficacy of this kind of training, it is important to identify the factors that facilitate the motor imagery process for handwriting movements. Several studies have shown that motor imagery is more easily achieved when there is maximum compatibility between the actual posture and the imagined movement. We, therefore, examined the effect of posture congruency on visual and kinesthetic motor imagery for handwriting movements. Adult participants had to write and imagine writing a sentence by focusing on the evocation of either the kinesthetic or visual consequences of the motion. Half the participants performed the motor imagery task in a congruent posture (sitting with a hand ready for writing), and half in an incongruent one (standing with arms crossed behind the back and fingers spread wide). The temporal similarity between actual and imagined movement times and the vividness of the motor imagery were evaluated. Results revealed that temporal similarity was stronger in the congruent posture condition than in the incongruent one. Furthermore, in the incongruent posture condition, participants reported greater difficulty forming a precise kinesthetic motor image of themselves writing than a visual image, whereas no difference was observed in the congruent posture condition. Taken together, our results show that postural information is taken into account during the mental simulation of handwriting movements. The implications of these findings for guiding the design of motor imagery training are discussed.

Soft neurological signs in childhood by measurement of arm movements using acceleration and angular velocity sensors

Soft neurological signs (SNS) are evident in the motor performance of children and disappear as the child grows up. Therefore SNS are used as criteria for evaluating age-appropriate development of neurological function. The aim of this study was to quantify SNS during arm movement in childhood. In this study, we focused on pronation and supination, which are arm movements included in the SNS examination. Two hundred and twenty-three typically developing children aged 4-12 years (107 boys, 116 girls) and 18 adults aged 21-26 years (16 males, two females) participated in the experiment. To quantify SNS during pronation and supination, we calculated several evaluation index scores: bimanual symmetry, compliance, postural stability, motor speed and mirror movement. These index scores were evaluated using data obtained from sensors attached to the participants' hands and elbows. Each score increased as age increased. Results obtained using our system showed developmental changes that were consistent with criteria for SNS. We were able to successfully quantify SNS during pronation and supination. These results indicate that it may be possible to use our system as quantitative criteria for evaluating development of neurological function.

Current insights in the development of children's motor imagery ability

Over the last two decades, the number of studies on motor imagery in children has witnessed a large expansion. Most studies used the hand laterality judgment paradigm or the mental chronometry paradigm to examine motor imagery ability. The main objective of the current review is to collate these studies to provide a more comprehensive insight in children’s motor imagery development and its age of onset. Motor imagery is a form of motor cognition and aligns with forward (or predictive) models of motor control. Studying age-related differences in motor imagery ability in children therefore provides insight in underlying processes of motor development during childhood. Another motivation for studying age-related differences in motor imagery is that in order to effectively apply motor imagery training in children (with motor impairments), it is pertinent to first establish the age at which children are actually able to perform motor imagery. Overall, performance in the imagery tasks develops between 5 and 12 years of age. The age of motor imagery onset, however, remains equivocal, as some studies indicate that children of 5 to 7 years old can already enlist motor imagery in an implicit motor imagery task, whereas other studies using explicit instructions revealed that children do not use motor imagery before the age of 10. From the findings of the current study, we can conclude that motor imagery training is potentially a feasible method for pediatric rehabilitation in children from 5 years on. We suggest that younger children are most likely to benefit from motor imagery training that is presented in an implicit way. Action observation training might be a beneficial adjunct to implicit motor imagery training. From 10 years of age, more explicit forms of motor imagery training can be effectively used.

Children's learning of tennis skills is facilitated by external focus instructions

The present study examined the effects of instructions promoting external versus internal foci of attention on the learning of a tennis forehand stroke in 11-year old children. Three groups of participants practiced hitting tennis balls at a target. External focus group participants were instructed to direct their attention to the movement of the racquet, while participants in the internal focus group were asked to direct their attention to the movements of their arm. Participants in a control group did not receive attentional focus instructions. Two days after the practice phase (60 trials), learning was assessed in retention and transfer tests. The results showed that the external focus group demonstrated greater accuracy in hitting a target relative to the two other groups in retention, and relative to the internal focus group in transfer. We conclude that instructions inducing an external focus of attention can enhance children's sport skill learning.

Effects of mental and physical practice on a finger opposition task among children

PURPOSE

We sought to compare the effects of physical practice (PP) and mental practice (MP) on the immediate and long-term learning of the finger-to-thumb opposition sequence task (FOS) in children; in addition, we investigated the transfer of this learning to an untrained sequence of movements and to the contralateral untrained hand.

METHOD

This study included thirty-six 9- and 10-year-old children who were randomly allocated into 3 groups: MP, PP, and no practice (NP). The MP and PP groups were subjected to a single session of training with the dominant trained hand. MP participants were trained by mentally rehearsing the movements, PP participants were trained by executing the movements, and the NP group had no training. The performance of the trained sequence (TS) and untrained reverse sequence (URS) by each of the 3 groups was evaluated under identical conditions before training, after 5 min, and at 4 days, 7 days, and 28 days after training.

RESULTS

Whereas both trained groups (MP and PP) showed statistically significant improvement in TS using the trained hand at all assessment points after the training, only MP participants were able to transfer the performance gains from the TS to the URS and from the trained hand to the untrained opposite hand.

CONCLUSION

Children were able to learn the FOS through MP or PP with a similar level of performance. Unlike PP, MP allowed for the transfer of performance gain to the URS and to the opposite hand, suggesting that the internal representations developed by MP were effector-independent.

The influence of early aging on eye movements during motor simulation

Movement based interventions such as imagery and action observation are used increasingly to support physical rehabilitation of adults during early aging. The efficacy of these more covert approaches is based on an intuitively appealing assumption that movement execution, imagery and observation share neural substrate; alteration of one influences directly the function of the other two. Using eye movement metrics this paper reports findings that question the congruency of the three conditions. The data reveal that simulating movement through imagery and action observation may offer older adults movement practice conditions that are not constrained by the age-related decline observed in physical conditions. In addition, the findings provide support for action observation as a more effective technique for movement reproduction in comparison to imagery. This concern for imagery was also seen in the less congruent temporal relationship in movement time between imagery and movement execution suggesting imagery inaccuracy in early aging.

Disentangling fine motor skills' relations to academic achievement: the relative contributions of visual-spatial integration and visual-motor coordination

Recent research has established a connection between children's fine motor skills and their academic performance. Previous research has focused on fine motor skills measured prior to elementary school, while the present sample included children ages 5-18 years old, making it possible to examine whether this link remains relevant throughout childhood and adolescence. Furthermore, the majority of research linking fine motor skills and academic achievement has not determined which specific components of fine motor skill are driving this relation. The few studies that have looked at associations of separate fine motor tasks with achievement suggest that copying tasks that tap visual-spatial integration skills are most closely related to achievement. The present study examined two separate elements of fine motor skills--visual-motor coordination and visual-spatial integration--and their associations with various measures of academic achievement. Visual-motor coordination was measured using tracing tasks, while visual-spatial integration was measured using copy-a-figure tasks. After controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, IQ, and visual-motor coordination, and visual-spatial integration explained significant variance in children's math and written expression achievement. Knowing that visual-spatial integration skills are associated with these two achievement domains suggests potential avenues for targeted math and writing interventions for children of all ages.

A Comparison of Movement Imagery Ability Self-Report and Imagery Use in a Motor Task: A Preliminary Investigation

The present study used the Movement Imagery Questionnaire (MIQ-3) to determine the relationship between self-report movement imagery ability and performance on a motor task requiring use of visual and kinesthetic imagery. Young adults were asked to view a number sequence of 4- and 5 digits, maintain the information over a 6 s delay (blank screen) using visual imagery maintenance, and complete the sequence by finger-tapping complementary numbers using motor (kinesthetic) imagery and actually executing movements. We predicted higher movement imagery ability scores would be associated with faster movement times, and imagery ability would be significantly related to the motor tasks. Correlation results indicated no significant differences between self-report and finger-tapping scores, suggesting that in the context of the motor tasks used here, performance was independent of movement imagery ability. Discussion of this preliminary study focuses on the role of visual working memory in the motor task used here and its lack of assessment using the MIQ-3 and other current self-reports.

Does implicit motor imagery ability predict reaching correction efficiency? A test of recent models of human motor control

Neurocomputational models of reaching indicate that efficient purposive correction of movement midflight (e.g., online control) depends on one's ability to generate and monitor an accurate internal (neural) movement representation. In the first study to test this empirically, the authors investigated the relationship between healthy young adults' implicit motor imagery performance and their capacity to correct their reaching trajectory. As expected, after controlling for general reaching speed, hierarchical regression demonstrated that imagery ability was a significant predictor of hand correction speed; that is, faster and more accurate imagery performance associated with faster corrections to reaching following target displacement at movement onset. They argue that these findings provide preliminary support for the view that a link exists between an individual's ability to represent movement mentally and correct movement online efficiently.

Aging in movement representations for sequential finger movements: a comparison between young-, middle-aged, and older adults

Studies show that as we enter older adulthood (>64years), our ability to mentally represent action in the form of using motor imagery declines. Using a chronometry paradigm to compare the movement duration of imagined and executed movements, we tested young-, middle-aged, and older adults on their ability to perform sequential finger (fine-motor) movements. The task required number recognition and ordering and was presented in three levels of complexity. Results for movement duration indicated no differences between young- and middle-aged adults, however both performed faster than the older group. In regard to the association between imagined and executed actions, correlation analyses indicated that values for all groups were positive and moderate (r's .80,.76,.70). In summary, whereas the older adults were significantly slower in processing actions than their younger counterparts, the ability to mentally represent their actions was similar.

In the elderly, failure to update internal models leads to over-optimistic predictions about upcoming actions

Before an action is performed, the brain simulates the body's dynamic behavior in relation to the environment, estimates the possible outcomes and assesses the feasibility of potential actions. Here, we tested a hypothesis whereby age-related changes in sensorimotor abilities result in failure to update internal models of action in the elderly. Young and older adults were required to judge in advance whether or not they could stand on an inclined plane (Experiment 1). Relative to young adults, elderly adults overestimated their postural capabilities: although the two groups made similar feasibility judgments, elderly participants showed significantly worse postural performance levels. This tendency to overestimate their own ability persisted when elderly adults had to not only estimate the feasibility of an action but also endanger themselves by walking towards an obstacle that was too high for them to clear (Experiment 2). An age-related failure to update internal models may prompt the elderly to make over-optimistic predictions about upcoming actions. In turn, this may favor risky motor decision-making and promote falls.