Role of the Embodied Cognition Process in Perspective-Taking Ability During Childhood.

This study examined developmental changes in Level-2 visual perspective taking (VPT2) in 90 children aged 4-12 years and tested the role of their ability to mentally simulate changes to their bodily locations (self-motion imagery; SMI). Performance of a mental toy rotation task and a self-motion (SM) task (changing location of children) was superior to that of VPT2 and SMI tasks. Task performance of SMI was better than that of VPT2 before 10;0 (years;months). Furthermore, egocentric responses in VPT2 and SMI tasks were significantly more frequent than those in the mental rotation and SM tasks before 10;3. These findings suggest the involvement of embodied cognitive processes in perspective taking and the advantage of utilizing bodily information by age 10.

Individual optimal attentional strategy during implicit motor learning boosts frontoparietal neural processing efficiency: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

INTRODUCTION: Optimal focus of attention is a crucial factor for improving motor learning. Most previous studies have shown that directing attention to movement outcome (external focus; EF) is more effective than directing attention to body movement itself (internal focus; IF). However, our recent studies demonstrated that the optimal attentional strategy in healthy and clinical populations varies depending on individual motor imagery ability. To explore the neurological basis underlying individual optimal attentional strategy during motor learning tasks, in the present study, we measured frontoparietal activities using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). METHODS: Twenty-eight participants performed a visuomotor learning task requiring circular tracking. During the task, the participants were required to direct their attention internally or externally. The individual optimal attentional strategy was determined by comparing the after-effect sizes between the IF and EF conditions. RESULTS: Fifteen participants showed larger after-effects under the EF condition (External-dominant), whereas the others showed larger after-effects under the IF condition (Internal-dominant). Based on the differences in neural activities between Internal- and External-dominant groups, we identified the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 46) and right somatosensory association cortex (Brodmann area 7) as the neural bases associated with individual optimal attentional strategy during motor learning. Furthermore, we observed a significant negative correlation, that is, lower activity in these areas was associated with a larger after-effect size under the optimal attentional strategy. CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrated that more efficient neural processing in the frontoparietal area under the individual optimal attentional strategy can accelerate motor learning.

Improved motor performance in patients with acute stroke using the optimal individual attentional strategy.

It is believed that motor performance improves when individuals direct attention to movement outcome (external focus, EF) rather than to body movement itself (internal focus, IF). However, our previous study found that an optimal individual attentional strategy depended on motor imagery ability. We explored whether the individual motor imagery ability in stroke patients also affected the optimal attentional strategy for motor control. Individual motor imagery ability was determined as either kinesthetic- or visual-dominant by a questionnaire in 28 patients and 28 healthy-controls. Participants then performed a visuomotor task that required tracing a trajectory under three attentional conditions: no instruction (NI), attention to hand movement (IF), or attention to cursor movement (EF). Movement error in the stroke group strongly depended on individual modality dominance of motor imagery. Patients with kinesthetic dominance showed higher motor accuracy under the IF condition but with concomitantly lower velocity. Alternatively, patients with visual dominance showed improvements in both speed and accuracy under the EF condition. These results suggest that the optimal attentional strategy for improving motor accuracy in stroke rehabilitation differs according to the individual dominance of motor imagery. Our findings may contribute to the development of tailor-made pre-assessment and rehabilitation programs optimized for individual cognitive abilities.

Optimization of a motor learning attention-directing strategy based on an individual's motor imagery ability.

Motor learning performance has been shown to be affected by various cognitive factors such as the focus of attention and motor imagery ability. Most previous studies on motor learning have shown that directing the attention of participants externally, such as on the outcome of an assigned body movement, can be more effective than directing their attention internally, such as on body movement itself. However, to the best of our knowledge, no findings have been reported on the effect of the focus of attention selected according to the motor imagery ability of an individual on motor learning performance. We measured individual motor imagery ability assessed by the Movement Imagery Questionnaire and classified the participants into kinesthetic-dominant (n = 12) and visual-dominant (n = 8) groups based on the questionnaire score. Subsequently, the participants performed a motor learning task such as tracing a trajectory using visuomotor rotation. When the participants were required to direct their attention internally, the after-effects of the learning task in the kinesthetic-dominant group were significantly greater than those in the visual-dominant group. Conversely, when the participants were required to direct their attention externally, the after-effects of the visual-dominant group were significantly greater than those of the kinesthetic-dominant group. Furthermore, we found a significant positive correlation between the size of after-effects and the modality-dominance of motor imagery. These results suggest that a suitable attention strategy based on the intrinsic motor imagery ability of an individual can improve performance during motor learning tasks.

Developmental changes in mental rotation ability and visual perspective-taking in children and adults with Williams syndrome.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder caused by the partial deletion of chromosome 7. Individuals with WS have atypical cognitive abilities, such as hypersociability and compromised visuospatial cognition, although the mechanisms underlying these deficits, as well as the relationship between them, remain unclear. Here, we assessed performance in mental rotation (MR) and level 2 visual perspective taking (VPT2) tasks in individuals with and without WS. Individuals with WS obtained lower scores in the VPT2 task than in the MR task. These individuals also performed poorly on both the MR and VPT2 tasks compared with members of a control group. For the individuals in the control group, performance scores improved during development for both tasks, while the scores of those in the WS group improved only in the MR task, and not the VPT2 task. Therefore, we conducted a second experiment to explore the specific cognitive challenges faced by people with WS in the VPT2 task. In addition to asking participants to change their physical location (self-motion), we also asked them to adopt a third-person perspective by imagining that they had moved to a specified location (self-motion imagery). This enabled us to assess their ability to simulate the movement of their own bodies. The performance in the control group improved in both the self-motion and self-motion imagery tasks and both performances were correlated with verbal mental age. However, we did not find any developmental changes in performance for either task in the WS group. Performance scores for the self-motion imagery task in the WS group were low, similar to the scores observed for the VPT2 in this population. These results suggest that MR and VPT2 tasks involve different processes, and that these processes develop differently in people with WS. Moreover, difficulty completing VPT2 tasks may be partly because of an inability of people with WS to accurately simulate mental body motion.