Fine Motor Skills and Lexical Processing in Children and Adults

Children’s fine motor skills (FMS) link to cognitive development, however, research on their involvement in language processing, also with adults, is scarce. Lexical items are processed differently depending the degree of sensorimotor information inherent words’ meanings, such as whether these imply a body-object interaction (BOI) or body-part association (i.e., hand, arm, mouth, foot). Accordingly, three studies examined lexical processing was affected by FMS, BOIness, and associations children (study 1, n = 77) adults 2, 80; study 3, 71). Analyses showed differential between FMS function age. Whereas response latencies indicated that children’s were associated “hand” words, adults’ linked broader concept BOI. Findings have implications for shared activation theories positing support processing.