Motor memory in childhood: Early expression of consolidation phase gains

•All children robustly improved their performance within the training session.•Additional, delayed, gains in performance were expressed at 24 h post-training.•Delayed-gains in performance were already expressed within 1 h post-training.•The gains attained after 1 h were 48% of the gains at 24 h post-training.•Children express significant delayed gains even without the affordance of time in sleep.

Are children faster than adults in consolidating procedural knowledge? In adults, the expression of the full benefits of motor practice requires a few hours of consolidation and sleep. Here we show that, although the processes generating the delayed gains continued beyond the first few hours post-training, children expressed significant gains as early as 1 h post-training, in the awake state.