Developing motor planning over ages

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 unimanual bar transport task. In Experiment 1, only 10-year-olds reached the same level of sensitivity to end-state comfort as adults, and 8-year-olds were less efficient than 6-year-olds. In each age group, children’s sensitivity did not increase during a session: i.e., either clearly showed the sensitivity or showed no sensitivity at all. Experiment 2 replicated these results when the bar was replaced by a pencil and when the task did not require much precision. However, when the task required more precision, 8-year-olds increased their level of sensitivity to the end-state comfort effect, whereas this was not the case for younger children. These results describe the development of advanced planning processes from 4 to 10 years of age as well as the positive effect of task constraints on the end-state comfort effect for 8-year-olds.