The end-state comfort effect in 3- to 8-year-old children in two object manipulation tasks
The aim of the study was to compare 3- to 8-year-old children’s propensity to antici-
pate a comfortable hand posture at the end of a grasping movement (
end-state comfort
effect
) between two different object manipulation tasks, the bar-transport task, and the
overturned-glass task. In the bar-transport task, participants were asked to insert a verti-
cally positioned bar into a small opening of a box. In the overturned-glass task, participants
were asked to put an overturned-glass right-side-up on a coaster. Half of the participants
experienced action effects (lights) as a consequence of their movements (AE groups),
while the other half of the participants did not (No-AE groups). While there was no differ-
ence between the AE and No-AE groups, end-state comfort performance differed across
age as well as between tasks. Results revealed a significant increase in end-state comfort
performance in the bar-transport task from 13% in the 3-year-olds to 94% in the 8-year-
olds. Interestingly, the number of children grasping the bar according to end-state comfort
doubled from 3 to 4 years and from 4 to 5 years of age. In the overturned-glass task an
increase in end-state comfort performance from already 63% in the 3-year-olds to 100%
in the 8-year-olds was significant as well. When comparing end-state comfort performance
across tasks, results showed that 3- and 4-year-old children were better at manipulating
the glass as compared to manipulating the bar, most probably, because children are more
familiar with manipulating glasses. Together, these results suggest that preschool years
are an important period for the development of motor planning in which the familiarity
with the object involved in the task plays a significant role in children’s ability to plan their
movements according to end-state comfort.
Share this page