Motor learning of a bimanual task in children with unilateral cerebral palsy

• Children with unilateral CP showed reduced and slow learning of a bimanual task.
• The learning curves fit to an exponential function for children with unilateral CP.
• The importance of sufficient practice of motor tasks for rehabilitation schedules.

Children with unilateral cerebral palsy (CP) have been shown to improve their motor performance with sufficient practice. However, little is known about how they learn goal-oriented tasks. In the current study, 21 children with unilateral CP (age 4–10 years old) and 21 age-matched typically developed children (TDC) practiced a simple bimanual speed stack task over 15 days of practice. Both groups demonstrated their ability to learn the current bimanual task, but their rate of improvement and learning pattern differed. Children with unilateral CP overall were slower and improved ~10% less than TDC. Most of the improvement occurred during the first 3 days for the TDC, whereas performance did not plateau until 6–8 days for the children with unilateral CP. This initial slower learning rate for children with unilateral CP was also confirmed by better fitting of the curve to an exponential function than the power law function (p < 0.05). Therefore, when working with children with unilateral CP, sufficient practice is important (two to three times more than for TDC), and delayed improvement is expected.