Effects of temporal and/or spatial instructions on the speed-accuracy trade-off of pointing movements in children

The present experiment examined in a visuo-manual task the effects of verbal instructions on the speed/accuracy trade-off across children aged 6, 8 and 10 years and adults. Three different verbal instructions (speed, accuracy and speed-accuracy) had to be respected to perform a pointing task. Analysis of reaction time (RT), movement time (MT) and percentage of targets reach showed that: (1) whatever the age, children were able to comply with the verbal instructions to adapt the velocity and/or the precision of their response (initiation and movement execution); (2) the main age-related difference of the speed-accuracy trade-off concerned the temporal (MT) but not the accuracy (targets reach) characteristics of the pointing movements; and (3) in the older children and even more precisely in adults, a temporal deficit was observed when the accuracy of aiming was required. This deficit increased as accuracy increased. These results were discussed within the theoretical frameworks of the developmental speed processing model proposed by Kail [Psychol. Bull., 109(3) (1991) 490-501] for RT data, and the speed-accuracy trade-off model proposed by Pachella [Pachella, R.G., The interpretation of reaction time in information-processing research, in, Kantowitz, B. (ed) Human Information Processing: Tutorial in Performance and Recognition, Erlbaum, (1974) 41-821 for MT and targets reach data. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.