Quantifying Visuomotor Maturation From Middle Childhood to Adolescence

Proficiency in fine motor skills improves significantly from childhood into adolescence; however, a longitudinal approach has not been used to examine the maturation trajectory of eye-hand coordination. Capturing individual performance changes by following the same cohort over time could offer unique insight into the developmental processes. This study assessed eye and hand kinematics during the execution of a prehension task in typically developing children (n = 17) tested at two time points: middle childhood (mean age: 9.14 years) and adolescence (mean age: 13.51 years). Results showed significant improvement in overall performance, which was due to shorter fixation duration, faster reaching duration, and shorter object placement duration. Temporal pattern of eye-hand coordination became more mature (adult-like) when picking up an object, indicating efficient coordination between the grasp and reach movements. Results demonstrate that kinematic analysis of prehension and eye-hand coordination provides a sensitive assay of the maturation trajectory of visuohaptic integration during prehension. These findings may support new methods for assessing fine motor skills and enhance the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders linked to visuomotor impairments.