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ERIC Number: EJ933374
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0028-3932
EISSN: N/A
Development of Action Representation during Adolescence
Choudhury, Suparna; Charman, Tony; Bird, Victoria; Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne
Neuropsychologia, v45 n2 p255-262 2007
During adolescence the body undergoes many physical changes. These changes necessitate an updating of internal models of action. Here, we tested the hypothesis that internal models undergo refinement between adolescence and adulthood. We investigated the chronometry of executed and imagined hand actions, which relies on internal models, in 40 adolescents (24 males; mean age 13.1 years) and 33 adults (15 males; mean age 27.5 years). In two different motor imagery tasks, the time it took each participant to execute a hand movement was compared with the time it took them to imagine making that movement. For all participants, movement execution time significantly correlated with movement imagery time. However, there was a significant increase in the execution-imagery time correlation between adolescence and adulthood. Cognitive-motor efficiency "per se" did not change as indexed by both similar execution and imagery times on both tasks for the adolescents and adults. That it was only the correlation between imagined and executed actions that changed with age suggests that the developmental change was specific to generating accurate motor images and not a result of general cognitive improvement with age. The results support the notion that aspects of internal models are refined during adolescence. We suggest that this refinement may be facilitated by the development of parietal cortex during adolescence. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A