Major Changes in a Rhythmic Ball-Bouncing Task Occur at Age 7 Years

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the development of a rhythmical skill of children aged from 5 to 12 years old. Five age groups (5–6, 7–8, 9–10, 11–12, and young adults) performed a virtual ball bouncing task (16 forty-second long test trials). Task performances, racket oscillation, ball-racket impacts as well as the ball-racket coupling were analysed. The results showed a change in both performance and behaviour at the age of 7 years old. Before this age, children exhibited restricted perceptual-motor coordination with a high frequency of racket oscillation and a poor level of performance. After the age of 7, cycle-to-cycle adaptive coordination based on visual information was progressively acquired leading to increasing performance levels with age. Overall these results revealed a rapid change in capability to perform the ball bouncing task across age with a late emergence of the required coordination and significant change in the coordination at the age of 7.

Development of information–movement couplings in a rhythmical ball-bouncing task: from space- to time-related information

“…From her point of view, "developmental progress is not aimed toward reducing variability, but toward learning to control and exploit variability". In a previous ball-bouncing experiment relating to child development, we observed that children's motor variability in a steady-state ball-bouncing task remained higher than that of adults; indeed, it was different in nature until at least 12 years of age (Bazile et al 2013). In the present experiment, we will explore the mean performance and performance variability of children and adults when perturbations are introduced into a ball's trajectory.…”

“…They did so by manipulating a physical table tennis racket. Bazile et al (2013) observed major changes in both performance and behaviour at the age of 7 years. Those aged less than 7 years exhibited restricted perceptual-motor coordination characterized by a high frequency of racket oscillation and poor performance.…”

“…These results indicate that the stability of rhythmic perceptionaction coordination patterns increases with age. In a more recent study, Bazile et al (2013) investigated the development of a ball-bouncing task. Children between the ages of 5 and 12 years were asked to rhythmically bounce a virtual ball on a virtual racket, both of which were visible on a large screen.…”

Model of rhythmic ball bouncing using a visually controlled neural oscillator

“…To contribute to the debate opposing these theories, the present paper considers the one-dimensional (vertical) ballbouncing task. It is a well-known model system in neuroscience (Ankarali et al 2014;Bazile et al 2013Bazile et al , 2016Marchal-Crespo et al 2015;Morice et al 2007;Schaal et al 1996;Siegler et al 2010Siegler et al , 2013Sternad et al 2001;Wei et al 2007Wei et al , 2008, robotics (Buehler et al 1994;Kulchenko and Todorov 2011;Williamson 1999), and nonlinear dynamics (Vincent and Mees 2000) to investigate control and stability of tasks involving an agent coupled with an environment through contacts and information exchanges. The agent oscillates the paddle to hit the ball in such a way that the ball ideally reaches a predefined target height at each cycle (see Fig.…”

Rhythmic movement: The role of expectancy and skill in event and emergent timing

“…Timing accuracy, visuo-motor coordination, and spontaneous limb entrainment improve considerably from the age of 8 years (Pellizer & Hauert, 1996;Bazile, Siegler & Benguigui, 2013). Bo and colleagues (2008) tested spatial and temporal variability in self-paced continuous and discontinuous (discrete) tasks with children ranging from 5 to 10 years old, and found that younger children exhibited the highest temporal variability for discontinuous circle drawing (in which there is a pause after each circle that is drawn).…”