title: Effects of mental and physical practice on a finger opposition task among children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We sought to compare the effects of physical practice (PP) and mental practice (MP) on the immediate and long-term learning of the finger-to-thumb opposition sequence task (FOS) in children; in addition, we investigated the transfer of this learning to an untrained sequence of movements and to the contralateral untrained hand.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study included thirty-six 9- and 10-year-old children who were randomly allocated into 3 groups: MP, PP, and no practice (NP). The MP and PP groups were subjected to a single session of training with the dominant trained hand. MP participants were trained by mentally rehearsing the movements, PP participants were trained by executing the movements, and the NP group had no training. The performance of the trained sequence (TS) and untrained reverse sequence (URS) by each of the 3 groups was evaluated under identical conditions before training, after 5 min, and at 4 days, 7 days, and 28 days after training.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Whereas both trained groups (MP and PP) showed statistically significant improvement in TS using the trained hand at all assessment points after the training, only MP participants were able to transfer the performance gains from the TS to the URS and from the trained hand to the untrained opposite hand.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Children were able to learn the FOS through MP or PP with a similar level of performance. Unlike PP, MP allowed for the transfer of performance gain to the URS and to the opposite hand, suggesting that the internal representations developed by MP were effector-independent.
authors.affiliation: a University of São Paulo.
authors.forename: Sabrina Kyoko de Paula
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Asa
authors.forename: Mara Cristina Santos
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Melo
authors.forename: Maria Elisa Pimentel
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Piemonte
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*
keywords: effector-independent representation; internal forward model; sequence representation; transfer