Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) is the most common of the genetically inherited ataxias. We recently demonstrated that people with FRDA have impairment in motor planning--most likely because of pathology affecting the cerebral cortex and/or cerebello-cortical projections. We used the Simon interference task to examine how effective 13 individuals with…

Theory suggests that imagined and executed movement planning relies on internal models for action. Using a chronometry paradigm to compare the movement duration of imagined and executed movements, we tested children aged 7-11 years and adults on their ability to perform sequential finger movements. Underscoring this tactic was our desire to gain a…

The ability to learn temporal patterns in sequenced actions was investigated in elementary-school age children. Temporal learning depends upon a process of integrating timing patterns with action sequences. Children ages 6-13 and young adults performed a serial response time task in which a response and a timing sequence were presented repeatedly…

The term "representational momentum" (RM) refers to the idea that our memory representations for moving objects incorporate information about movement--a fact that can lead us to make errors when judging an object's location (the RM effect). In this study, we explored the RM effect in a sample of children born very prematurely and a sample born at…

Lateralisation of hand preference and manual dexterity are known to develop over childhood, while in adulthood strength of hand preference has been shown to interact with extrinsic task demands. Some evidence exists to suggest that strength of hand preference and motor skill may be related. In the current study a handedness inventory, midline…

Two tasks hypothesized to assess the efficiency of route selection were administered to 328 adults ranging from 18 to 93 years of age. Increased age was associated with slower completion of mazes, even after adjusting for differences in perceptual-motor speed, and with longer and less accurate routes in a task in which participants were asked to…