The role of motor memory in action selection and procedural learning: insights from children with typical and atypical development

Jessica Tallet (1) , Jean-Michel Albaret (1) , James Rivière (2)

1 PRISSMH - Programme Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Sciences du Sport et du Mouvement Humain
2 PSY-NCA - Psychologie et Neurosciences de la Cognition et de l'affectivité

Motor memory is the process by which humans can adopt both persistent and flexible motor behaviors. Persistence and flexibility can be assessed through the examination of the cooperation/competition between new and old motor routines in the motor memory repertoire. Two paradigms seem to be particularly relevant to examine this competition/cooperation. First, a manual search task for hidden objects, namely the C-not-B task, which allows examining how a motor routine may influence the selection of action in toddlers. The second paradigm is procedural learning, and more precisely the consolidation stage, which allows assessing how a previously learnt motor routine becomes resistant to subsequent programming or learning of a new competitive motor routine. The present article defends the idea that results of both paradigms give precious information to understand the evolution of motor routines in healthy children. Moreover, these findings echo some clinical observations in developmental neuropsychology, particularly in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder. Such studies suggest that the level of equilibrium between persistence and flexibility of motor routines is an index of the maturity of the motor system.

Mots clés: motor control; motor routine; C-not-B task; developmental coordination disorder

Domaines: Psychologie

Jessica Tallet, Jean-Michel Albaret, James Rivière. The role of motor memory in action selection and procedural learning: insights from children with typical and atypical development. Socioaffective Neuroscience and Psychology, 2015, 5, pp.28004. ⟨10.3402/snp.v5.28004⟩. ⟨hal-01228930⟩