Peer-reviewed article
Evaluating age-related differences in motor imagery in children aged 5 to 8: feasibility and task-specific modulation
Giorgio Cannavacciuolo, Marie-Bertille Dehouck, Véronique Bury, Céline Lekieffre, Corinne Debuire et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5The study looked at how well children aged 5 to 8 can mentally imagine movements, such as standing up, walking, drawing and handling cubes. 118 children from the last year of kindergarten to third grade did each task for real and in imagination, and the time taken was compared. The test battery gave consistent results, and even the youngest children took part well. Older children matched imagined and real movement times better on simple, well-practised tasks, but not on more complex ones. The authors conclude that this kind of assessment is feasible from age five.
Key points
- 118 children aged 5–8 (61 females) completed executed and imagined trials of five functional tasks.
- Internal consistency was excellent (α = .91–.98) and test–retest reliability was moderate to excellent (ICC = .68–.92).
- Engagement with the imagery tasks increased with age but already exceeded 70% in the youngest group.
- Matching of real and imagined timing improved with age for simpler tasks (typical gait, standing up), but stayed stable across classes for complex tasks (precision gait, cube handling).
- Variability decreased with age, and older children's performance was increasingly influenced by task complexity.
Limitations
The abstract describes a comparison across school classes and calls for longitudinal and neuroimaging work, so it cannot show how individual children change over time or what brain mechanisms are involved. It does not link motor imagery to children's health, learning or wider well-being outcomes.
Abstract
Motor imagery (MI), the mental simulation of movement without execution, provides a behavioural tool to evaluate sensorimotor representations. However, its characterisation in young children remains debated. This study investigated age-related differences in MI across early primary school years using a multi-task battery. One hundred and eighteen children aged 5–8 years (61 females), spanning the final year of kindergarten (GSM), first grade (CP), second grade (CE1), and third grade (CE2), completed executed and imagined trials of five functional tasks (standing up, typical gait, precision gait, drawing, and cube handling). Psychometric properties of the battery were evaluated. To ensure feasibility, engagement with imagery tasks was verified by comparing executed-imagined consistency in complexity-duration structure (i.e., complex tasks take longer both when executed and when imagined). Age-related differences were evaluated in terms of execution–imagery isochrony and variability across classes. Internal consistency was excellent (α = .91–.98) and test–retest reliability ranged from moderate to excellent (ICC = .68–.92). Engagement increased by age but already exceeded 70 % in the youngest group. Isochrony improved with age for simpler, highly practised tasks (typical gait, standing up), whereas more complex tasks (precision gait, cube handling) showed stable performance across classes. Variability decreased with age, and older children’s performance became increasingly influenced by task complexity demands. Findings demonstrate that mental chronometry can reliably capture MI abilities in children as young as five, revealing both developmental gains and task-specific constraints. These results highlight the feasibility of MI assessment in early childhood, warranting the need for longitudinal neuroimaging approaches to clarify mechanistic insights.