The Link between Microdevelopment and Long-Term Learning Trajectories in Science Learning

Movers and shakers of cognition: Hand movements, speech, task properties, and variability

Children move their hands to explore, learn and communicate about hands-on tasks. Their hand movements seem to be "learning" ahead of speech. Children shape their hand movements in accordance with spatial and temporal task properties, such as when they feel an object or simulate its movements. Their speech does not directly correspond to these spatial and temporal task properties, however. We aimed to understand whether and how hand movements' are leading cognitive development due to their ability to correspond to spatiotemporal task properties, while speech is unable to do so. We explored whether hand movements' and speech's variability changed with a change in spatiotemporal task properties, using two variability measures: Diversity indicates adaptation, while Complexity indicates flexibility to adapt. In two experiments, we asked children (4-7 years) to predict and explain about balance scale problems, whereby we either manipulated the length of the balance scale or the mass of the weights after half of the trials. In three out of four conditions, we found a change in Complexity for both hand movements and speech between first and second half of the task. In one of these conditions, we found a relation between the differences in Complexity and Diversity of hand movements and speech. Changes in spatiotemporal task properties thus often influenced both hand movements' and speech's flexibility, but there seem to be differences in how they did so. We provided many directions for future research, to further unravel the relations between hand movements, speech, task properties, variability, and cognitive development.

Differential Activation and Functional Plasticity of Multimodal Areas Associated with Acquired Musical Skill

Training of a musical skill is known to produce a distributed neural representation of the ability to perceive music and perform musical tasks. In the present study we tested the hypothesis that the audiovisual perception of music involves a wider activation of multimodal sensory and sensorimotor structures in the brain, including those containing mirror neurons. We mapped the activation of brain areas during passive listening and viewing of the first 40 s of "Ode to Joy" being played on the piano by an expert pianist. To do this we performed brain functional magnetic resonance imaging during the presentation of 6 different stimulus contrasts pertaining to that musical melody in a pseudo-randomized order. Group data analysis in musically trained and untrained adults showed robust activation in broadly distributed occipitotemporal, parietal and frontal areas in trained subjects and much restricted activation in untrained subjects. A visual stimulus contrast focusing on the visual motion percept of moving fingers on piano keys revealed selective bilateral activation of a locus corresponding to the V5/MT area, which was significantly more pronounced in trained subjects and showed partial linear dependence on the duration of training on the left side. Quantitative analysis of individual brain volumes confirmed a significantly greater and wider spread of activation in trained compared to untrained subjects. These findings support the view that audiovisual perception of music and musical gestures in trained musicians involves an expanded and widely distributed neural representation formed due to experience-dependent plasticity.