The role of motor experience in cognitive development: Challenges and insights from atypical development

The most well-known form of learning and knowledge acquisition is motor experience [1]. Although models and theories have found it difficult to account for the wide range of empirical evidence in developmental studies [2], motor experience appears to be critical for cognitive development of typically developing children [3-6]. Through physical manipulation, exploration and interaction with the environment a child develops perceptual and social skills that will allow him/her to learn and act on the world [7-9]. The role of motor experience is highlighted in some of the most influential accounts of cognitive development. Piaget considered cognitive development to be a result of the construction of networked concepts and schemes derived from action on the environment [4]. For Piaget, the incorporation of new categories of knowledge encountered through physical experience determines adaptation and learning [10]. According to Piaget the sensorimotor stage of development during the first two years of life, is critical for the achievement of cognitive milestones such as object permanence and means end analysis [8]. In this period, the child actively manipulates objects, explores them individually and sequentially and finally realizes that one object can be used as a means to reach the other [11]. For example, a child can use a stick [8] or a string [12] to retrieve an object out of reach. The classic Piagetian A-not-B task has been widely used and studied in light of its correlation with motor development [13-15]. Different approaches to the study of development yield different explanations of perseverative errors in the A-not-B task and the role of independent motor experience [16-18]. Piaget's explanation for perseveration was based on the child's lack of cognitive understanding of object permanence of children less than 12 months [4]. A dynamic systems theory explanation of perseverative errors is that the child establishes a motor pattern of reaching to one target (e.g., A) that interferes with the child's correct retrieval when the target is