Sequential pointing in children and adults

The development of visuomotor control in sequential pointing was investigated in 6- to 10-year-old children and in adults. In 3 experiments we manipulated task difficulty by changing the number, the size, and the spacing of the targets in the sequences. In Experiment 4, only 1 movement was required; we varied independently the distance between targets and the distance of the starting point from the participant's body. Children's temporal and spatial parameters of the motor sequences showed large age dependent trends, but did nor reach the adult values. Comparison of performance across levels of difficulty and ages suggests that motor development is not a uniform fine-tuning of stable strategies, Instead, we argue that each stage of development is best characterized by the set of strategic components potentially available at that stage, and by the (age dependent) rules for the selection of components in a given context. (C) 2000 Academic Press.