Influences on the Emergence of Strategic Visuomotor Learning Mechanisms in School-Aged Children

Visuomotor learning, the ability to adapt our movement to the visual cues provided by our surroundings, is one of the most fundamental skills that develop during childhood. Visuomotor learning is divided into implicit procedural learning, which is a process through which movements are unconsciously improved based on visual signals, and explicit strategic learning, which is the conscious adoption of a planned behavior to achieve a desired result. In our study, we show that implicit procedural learning is present from an early school age. We likewise show that the capacity for explicit strategic learning is associated with chronological age as opposed to motor skills or IQ.