Exploration of Sensory-motor Representations in Children of Typical Development Aged 5 to 8

The early coupling of perception and action makes it possible to build the sensorimotor representations, necessary for the functions of anticipation, adaptation and learning which will allow a harmonious development of motor skills throughout ontogenesis. One of the current hypotheses to explain the learning disorders detected in elementary school is a defect in the development of sensorimotor representations. Our study therefore aims to assess the quality of sensorimotor representations in typically developing children aged 5 to 8 years, using a motor imaging protocol, conventionally used in the literature in adults and patients. child. This motor imagery protocol consists of comparing the time taken by the subject to perform a given action and the time taken to imagine the action he has just performed. More precisely, the mental chronometry paradigm, based on the similarity or the difference between the two durations, makes it possible to assess the robustness of sensorimotor representations. While this isochrony is widely reported in the literature in adults, developmental studies describe onset around 9-10 years of age. Currently there is a lack of data to know the construction of these sensorimotor representations in younger children, especially during the transition to primary school. The originality of our protocol lies in two points: 1. the proposed tasks are particularly suited to young children and 2. the subject himself times his performance in the two situations: action carried out and action imagined. The duration of the experience will last 1 hour per participant in a single session.