A Neo-Piagetian Investigation of the Serial Position Effect in Children’s Motor Learning

Abstract

Children’s serial motor skill acquisition was studied within a neo-Piagetian framework. High and low M-processors performed on a curvilinear repositioning task. A primacy-recency effect was evidenced for both groups on the age-related task, while a recency effect occurred for only the high M-processors on the task one stage beyond the developmental processing capacity of the subjects. High M-processors were more accurate and less variable than low M-processors. Although low M-processors performed better on the more complex task than on the simpler one, their performance never exceeded that of the high M-processors. Implications of these results for future research were discussed.