Anticipatory action planning increases from 3 to 10 years of age in typically developing children

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Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to assess the development of action planning in a group of typically developing children aged 3 to 10 years (N = 351). The second aim was to assess reliability of the action planning task and to relate the results of the action planning task to results of validated upper limb motor performance tests. Participants performed an action planning task in which they needed to grasp an object (a wooden play sword) and place it into a tight-fitting hole. Our main dependent variable was the grip type that participants used; that is, we measured whether initial grip was adapted in such a way that children reached a comfortable posture at the end of the action (the end-state comfort effect). Older children planned their actions more often in line with the end-state comfort effect compared with younger children. Test–retest and interrater reliability of the action planning task were good, with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) of .90 and .95, respectively. We compared the action planning task with manual dexterity tests in a subset of participants (n = 197). We found a marginal relation with the manual dexterity tests, indicating that the action planning task measures different processes. In sum, our study showed that action planning increases from 3 to 10 years of age and that the experimental task we used is reliable in assessing anticipatory planning. Therefore, it may be used as a reliable additional test to investigate the degree to which motor behavior is affected at the cognitive level of anticipatory planning.

Highlights

► Reference data were obtained for this experimental task in 351 children. ► Anticipatory action planning increased between 3 and 10 years. ► Reliability and validity were good for this action planning task. ► The action planning test can complement other manual tests in clinical settings.

Introduction

Action planning is an important feature of manipulative skills. Action planning can be defined as the ability to take task demands of the movement and goal of the action into account when first taking hold of an object (e.g., Johnson-Frey, McCarty, & Keen, 2004). For example, when coffee needs to be poured into a cup that is upside down on a shelf, most individuals will grasp the cup with the thumb down. Consequently, at the end of the task, after the cup is turned, the thumb is pointing upward. Thus, the action starts with an uncomfortable posture in order to end the movement in a comfortable posture. This effect has been labeled the end-state comfort effect (Cohen and Rosenbaum, 2004, Rosenbaum et al., 1992) and exemplifies that the end of the task is taken into account when first taking hold of the cup, even when this necessitates an initial uncomfortable posture. Ending in a comfortable posture allows more precision to be exerted at the end of the task (Short & Cauraugh, 1999). Importantly, the grip types used to start and end movements can thus be used as dependent variables to assess action planning (Crajé et al., 2010, Rosenbaum et al., 2001).

The end-state comfort effect is a well-known phenomenon in adults (e.g., Cohen and Rosenbaum, 2004, Rosenbaum et al., 2001, Short and Cauraugh, 1999). In children, however, research on the development of the end-state comfort effect is limited, and the results are equivocal. In two studies, no developmental effect was found in children aged 2 to 6 years (Adalbjornsson et al., 2008, Manoel and Moreira, 2005). Adalbjornsson et al. (2008) asked two groups of children (aged 2–3 and 5–6 years) to pick up a cup that was placed upside down. Children needed to turn it over and pour water into the cup. Only a few children displayed the end-state comfort effect, but there were no differences between the two age groups with respect to the number of children that used the end-state comfort effect. In line with this, Manoel and Moreira (2005) did not find a developmental effect in 2- to 6-year-olds in a bar grasping task. Smyth and Mason (1997) used a handle rotation task and a bar grasping task to assess action planning in 4- to 8-year-olds and found a developmental effect on the first task but not on the second task. In contrast to these studies, more recently in older children an age effect was shown by an increased occurrence of the end-state comfort effect (Janssen and Steenbergen, 2011, Stöckel et al., in press, Thibaut and Toussaint, 2010, Van Swieten et al., 2010, Weigelt and Schack, 2010). Three of these studies used a bar grasping task in 3- to 10-year-olds (Stöckel et al., in press, Thibaut and Toussaint, 2010, Weigelt and Schack, 2010), whereas Van Swieten et al. (2010) used a handle rotation task and did find an age effect in three age groups: 5 to 8 years, 9 to 14 years, and adults. Janssen and Steenbergen (2011) used a continuous measure of end-state comfort where participants needed to grasp a cylinder and transport it to a platform of which the height could be manipulated. In this study, an age effect on action planning was observed in 7- to 12-year-olds. In sum, the majority of studies show developmental trends in action planning.

In the studies described above, different experimental paradigms were used to assess action planning. Not all of these tasks are suitable to add in an upper limb performance assessment in a clinical setting. Therefore, recently we developed a simple and quick-to-administer task to measure action planning in a study in children with unilateral cerebral palsy aged 3 to 6 years (Crajé et al., 2010). The task was specifically designed to be interesting and playful for children. It consists of swinging a small wooden sword into a tight-fitting hole in a wooden block. No age effect for action planning was observed for the patient group. However, an age effect was observed for the control group of typically developing children, although action planning probably had not yet reached an adult level at the age of 6 years.

The first aim of the current study was to validate the previously observed developmental trends in action planning in a large group of typically developing children aged 3 to 10 years (N = 351). Based on the previous studies, we expected a developmental trend in action planning, observed as a steady increase of the use of comfortable end postures in children in this age range.

The second aim of this study was to assess the test–retest and interrater reliability of the action planning task and to relate the results of the action planning task to results of validated upper limb motor performance tests: the Box and Block Test for manual dexterity (Jongbloed-Pereboom et al., in press, Mathiowetz et al., 1985a, Mathiowetz et al., 1985b) and the subtests of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children, second edition, Dutch version (MABC-2 NL), which assess manual dexterity (Henderson, Sugden, Barnett, & Smits-Engelsman, 2010). By comparing the action planning task with these two manual dexterity tests, we were able to examine the relation between action planning and gross and fine manual dexterity tasks (divergent validity).

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 351 children aged 3 to 10 years. To assess hand dominance, children were asked to draw a boy or girl on a piece of paper, and 87% had a right hand preference. This corresponded to the percentage of right-handed people in the general population (Perelle & Ehrman, 1994). Children were recruited from five primary schools and three playgroups in The Netherlands. The schools and playgroups were selected by convenience in terms of logistics and contacts with the schools/playgroups

Development of action planning

The mean percentages of comfortable end postures in the action planning task as a function of age are shown in Fig. 2. First, we found an age effect for the percentage of comfortable end postures in the critical orientations, as evidenced by the finding that older children more often showed the end-state comfort effect, H(7) = 29.06, p < .001. As can be seen in Fig. 2, the age effect steadily increased between 3 and 10 years of age. Post hoc analysis (LSD) further revealed significantly more

Discussion

This study confirmed the previously found age effect in action planning in a large group of typically developing 3- to 10-year-olds. Specifically, we found a consistent developmental trend in action planning. The development of anticipatory motor planning increased steadily between 3 and 10 years of age, as older children planned their actions more often according to the end-posture comfort effect compared with younger children. Our findings are in accordance with five other recent studies (

Conclusions

We found a consistent developmental trend in action planning in a large group of children aged 3 to 10 years, with a drop in action planning at 9 years. This is the first study in which an experimental task measuring anticipatory planning was tested for reliability and compared with manual dexterity tasks. The action planning task was found to be reliable to test anticipatory planning in young children. Furthermore, the action planning task related marginally to two manual dexterity tasks.

We

Acknowledgments

We thank Marga Huntelaar, Monique Hermanns, Roos Schoonderbeek, Lotte Verschragen, Angèle Peeters, Mandy Bentvelsen, and Ilja van Lierop for their help in collecting the data. We also thank all of the children and their parents for participating in this study. Finally, we thank the participating schools for their help in organizing the data collection.

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    Current address: Research Group in Health Care and Nursing, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, 9714 CE Groningen, The Netherlands.

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