Van Roy Anke, Albouy Geneviève, Burns Ryan D, King Bradley R
Department of Health and Kinesiology, College of Health, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA.
Commun Psychol. 2024 Apr 15;2(1):30. doi: 10.1038/s44271-024-00082-9.
Changes in specific behaviors across the lifespan are frequently reported as 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. Here, we acquired data from 7-35 and >55 year-old participants and assessed potential developmental advantages in motor sequence learning and memory consolidation. Results revealed no credible evidence for differences in initial learning dynamics among age groups, but 7- to 12-year-old children exhibited smaller sequence-specific learning relative to adolescents, young adults and older adults. Interestingly, children demonstrated the greatest performance gains across the 5 h and 24 h offline periods, reflecting enhanced motor memory consolidation. These results suggest that children exhibit an advantage in the offline processing of recently learned motor sequences.
特定行为在整个生命周期中的变化经常被报告为倒U形轨迹。也就是说，年轻人表现出最佳性能，儿童被视为朝着这种理想状态发展的系统，而老年人则表现为性能下降。然而，并非所有行为都遵循这一轨迹，因为在某些情况下儿童的表现优于年轻人。在这里，我们收集了7至35岁和55岁以上参与者的数据，并评估了运动序列学习和记忆巩固方面潜在的发育优势。结果显示，没有可靠证据表明各年龄组在初始学习动态方面存在差异，但7至12岁的儿童相对于青少年、年轻人和老年人表现出较小的序列特异性学习。有趣的是，儿童在离线5小时和24小时期间表现出最大的性能提升，这反映了运动记忆巩固的增强。这些结果表明，儿童在最近学习的运动序列的离线处理方面具有优势。
