Children exhibit a developmental advantage in the offline processing of a learned motor sequence

Abstract

Research that examines changes in a specific behavior across the lifespan frequently reports an inverted-U trajectory. That is, young adults exhibit optimal performance, children are conceptualized as developing systems progressing towards this ideal state, and older adulthood is characterized by performance decrements. However, not all behaviors follow this trajectory, as there are instances in which children outperform young adults. This study aimed to reveal instances of childhood advantage in the domain of motor learning and memory consolidation. Using a visually cued serial reaction time task, data were acquired from 7-35 and >55-year-old participants (n=238 datasets) across two experiments that assessed initial encoding as well as memory consolidation over 5-hour and 24-hour offline periods. Results revealed comparable initial learning dynamics among age groups, but 7- to 12-year-old children exhibited smaller sequence-specific learning relative to adolescents (13-17 year-olds), young adults (18-35 year-olds) and older adults (> 55 years). Interestingly, children demonstrated the greatest performance gains in the 5-hour and 24-hour delayed retests, reflecting enhanced motor memory consolidation. These results suggest that children exhibit an advantage in the offline processing of recently learned motor sequences.