npj Science of Learning

Motor learning is shaped by motivational context: punishment can accelerate initial learning, whereas reward enhances memory retention. Yet it remains unclear whether the dissociable effects of reward and punishment observed in laboratory tasks generalize to complex real-world skills. Here, we tested this idea using a naturalistic motor task--basketball free-throw shooting. Sixty-eight participants trained under four motivational contexts that differed only in how points were awarded for each pair of consecutive shots: control (standard scoring), reward (bonus points for two consecutive successful shots), punishment (penalty for two consecutive missed shots), or mixed (both bonus and penalty). Performance was assessed before training, immediately after, and 1 and 3 days later. Punishment and mixed schedules significantly improved early acquisition, resulting in higher accuracy immediately after training compared to the control and reward conditions. This advantage emerged during the first training block, indicating a rapid motivational influence on performance. In contrast, reward selectively enhanced offline consolidation: three days after training, the reward group showed the largest gains in accuracy, outperforming both the control and punishment groups. The mixed schedule produced quick early gains similar to punishment, but achieved smaller long-term improvements than reward. Consistent with these findings, individual punishment sensitivity was associated with gains in acquisition, while reward sensitivity correlated with offline improvements. Together, these findings demonstrate dissociable effects of motivational valence on the acquisition and consolidation of a complex real-world motor skill. More generally, they position motivational interventions as simple and cost-effective strategies to enhance rehabilitation and sports training.

During explicit sequence learning (ESL), micro-offline gains (MOGS) occur during brief rest periods. MOGS are calculated as the difference in keypresses-per-second (KPS) between the first sequence of one trial and the last sequence of the preceding trial. To date, all studies evaluating MOGS have calculated KPS from the motor execution time (MET) that occurs between keypresses, but this approach ignores potential contributions from motor preparation which occur prior to the first keypress. Given that ESL relies on both pre-movement motor planning and subsequent motor execution, we hypothesized that ignoring motor preparation time (MPT) neglects a critical component of skill acquisition, potentially misrepresenting the true magnitude of MOGS. To test this, we calculated MOGS with and without MPT in thirty adults who performed an ESL task. Our results show that including MPT flipped MOGS from positive to negative and significantly increased the positive correlation between early learning and a gold-standard ESL metric: the number of correct sequences performed. Our results suggest that MPT should be incorporated into MOGS calculations and that excluding it overestimates micro-offline learning.

Stored memories are useless unless they are available for retrieval. Thus, investigating different ways to modulate retrieval is crucial. Novelty has been extensively studied as a modulator of memory. In this study, we investigated whether exposure to a novel event, an innovative neuroscience lesson, can enhance memory retrieval and divergent thinking in high school students. Across three experiments, we assessed the timing and mechanisms underlying these effects. In experiment 1, we found that memory retrieval was enhanced when the novel lesson occurred immediately before a memory test, but not when it was presented one hour earlier. In experiment 2, we found that the same immediate novelty exposure improved divergent thinking performance. Finally, in experiment 3, we explored potential shared mechanisms using a competition protocol and revealed that novelty improved divergent thinking regardless of its timing relative to memory retrieval. However, memory retrieval benefited only when tested immediately before the divergent thinking task. These results suggest that novelty boosts both memory retrieval and divergent thinking, but through partially distinct mechanisms. Our findings demonstrate that a simple, real-world classroom intervention can effectively enhance key cognitive functions in students. Significance StatementStored memories are only valuable if they can be retrieved, and memory retrieval plays a key role in creative thinking. Here, we tested whether a simple, novel event, a neuroscience lesson, could enhance memory retrieval and creative thinking in a real-world classroom setting. We found that novelty improved both memory retrieval and divergent thinking, an aspect of creative thinking, when presented immediately before the task. Finally, we revealed a non-reciprocal competition effect between memory retrieval and divergent thinking. These findings highlight a practical, low-cost intervention to boost key cognitive functions in students, demonstrating that brief, well-timed novel experiences can support both learning and creative thinking in educational environments.

Practice enhances motor acuity, enabling movement execution with greater speed and accuracy. However, the learning principles underlying improvements in speed, accuracy, and efficiency remain less understood than those supporting motor skill acquisition and adaptation. Here, we examined motor execution in a skill-based practice task to characterize learning, retention, and generalization of motor acuity. Using a gamified two-dimensional racing task, right-handed participants controlled a stylus-driven car along a curved track as quickly and accurately as possible. Across two studies (N = 83 total, 54 females), participants completed 300 training laps on Session 1 and returned for Session 2 to assess retention and generalization to novel track configurations: one with altered spatial configuration (rotated track) and one requiring movement in the opposite direction of training (reverse track). Movement speed improved rapidly and showed robust, though incomplete, retention across sessions. Speed improvements generalized substantially to both novel tracks. Accuracy was high at training onset and showed strong retention. However, we do not observe offline gains between sessions. Notably, accuracy declined transiently for the novel track configurations, suggesting interference from prior training. Movement efficiency, indexed by path length, was retained and generalized to the rotated track. However, reversing movement direction impaired efficiency, revealing a movement direction effect. This effect persisted when training direction was reversed in a second study, with counterclockwise movements remaining slower and less efficient than clockwise movements. These findings show that practice produces durable and broadly transferable motor execution improvements, while inherent movement direction biases constrain how improvements generalize across contexts. New & NoteworthyThe learning principles underlying improvements in motor acuity remain less well understood than those governing other forms of motor learning. Prior work suggests that motor execution improvements show limited generalization. In contrast, the present findings demonstrate that execution-based practice can produce robust, transferable gains, while also revealing a key constraint: inherent movement direction biases that limit generalization. By characterizing learning, retention, and generalization, this work provides new insight into how motor acuity improvements compare with skill acquisition and adaptation.

Response inhibition, the ability to suppress contextually inappropriate actions, is a cornerstone of cognitive control and is commonly assessed using paradigms such as the go/no-go task. However, traditional go/no-go paradigms rely on binary outcomes such as commission errors, which offer limited insight into the dynamic, graded behavioral adjustments underlying successful stopping. The present study developed a novel mouse-tracking go/no-go paradigm with a dynamic start to capture inhibitory processes during ongoing execution. Twenty-three healthy young adults completed the task in two sessions separated by approximately one week to evaluate the test-retest reliability of standard behavioral measures (error rates and reaction times), and three kinematic features: path length, mean velocity, and mean acceleration. Results revealed robust differences between go and no-go trials across all measures. Successful inhibition was characterized by significantly shorter path lengths and reduced mean velocity and acceleration compared to go trials. Critically, all measures demonstrated moderate-to-good test-retest reliability across sessions, with intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from .75 to .85 for go trials and from .59 to .83 for no-go trials. These findings establish construct validity and psychometric reliability of the current mouse-tracking go/no-go paradigm. The demonstrated stability of these measures provides the methodological foundation for their use in cross-sectional, longitudinal, and intervention research targeting inhibitory control.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been associated with atypical temporal processing across multiple cognitive domains. However, most evidence derives from simplified paradigms that isolate timing from spatial behaviour. Here, we examine how temporal prediction operates within a continuous, dynamic visual environment. Using the Dynamic Visual Search (DVS) task, we embedded spatiotemporal regularities into a sustained stream of visual events, allowing observers to implicitly learn and anticipate predictable targets. Continuous mouse tracking provided a fine-grained measure of action planning beyond discrete reaction time and accuracy metrics. Young adults diagnosed with ADHD (N=40) were compared to matched neurotypical controls (N=38). Both groups benefited from target predictability and reduced distractor load, indicating intact early spatiotemporal learning in ADHD. Across the duration of the task, however, the groups diverged. Neurotypical participants showed progressive increases in behavioural benefits from prediction, accompanied by increasingly direct and efficient mouse trajectories. In contrast, individuals with ADHD reached a plateau in prediction benefits midway through the experiment. Their performance remained stable, with minimal evidence of resource depletion, but did not show further optimisation based on learned regularities. These findings suggest that while prediction formation is preserved in ADHD, its progressive utilisation across longer timescales is attenuated. Rather than reflecting a primary deficit in learning or sustained attention, ADHD may involve altered long-timescale integration or weighting of predictive information in dynamic environments.

Students who frequently miss school are at greater risk for academic difficulty. High levels of absenteeism as early as kindergarten have been associated with long-term consequences, such as low reading proficiency in Grade 3 and low academic achievement in Grade 5, both of which have been associated with lower rates of high school graduation and enrollment in post-secondary education. The prevalence of school absenteeism has increased significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic and there have been sustained shifts in student attendance rates from kindergarten to Grade 12 since 2020. The goals of this population-level, repeated cross-sectional cohort study were to compare rates of chronic absenteeism, defined as being absent from school at least 10% of the time, in kindergarten in Canada before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and examine the association between childrens chronic absenteeism and their concurrent developmental vulnerability. A total of 513,159 kindergarten children participated in the study, with 284,712 (55.5%) being in the pre-COVID-19 cohort (2017-2020) and 228,447 (44.5%) in the post-COVID-19 cohort (2020-2023). Across Canada, rates of chronic absenteeism increased from pre- to post-COVID-19, from 17.7% to 41.3%, with differences by jurisdiction. The greatest increase was seen in Ontario, while the smallest increase was seen in British Columbia. Children attending kindergarten in the post-COVID-19 cohort were three times more likely to be chronically absent compared to their peers attending kindergarten before the onset of the pandemic. Despite this, chronic absenteeism in the post-COVID-19 period was associated with reduced odds of overall developmental vulnerability, a pattern that is likely attributable to shifts in the composition of chronically absent children. In the post-COVID-19 cohort, a greater percentage of children who were chronically absent resided in higher SES neighbourhoods compared to their chronically absent peers attending school before the onset of the pandemic. While increasing rates of school absenteeism should not be ignored, our results suggest that chronic absenteeism following COVID-19 might be more nuanced than before. The jurisdictional differences in rates of chronic absenteeism observed in this study could be due to the various public health measures put in place by the various provincial and territorial governments. It is also possible that the children from higher SES neighbourhoods missed more school after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic because their parents had the capability to work from home, making it easier to keep their child(ren) home from school. The decreased association between chronic absenteeism and developmental vulnerability post-COVID-19 may reflect improved access to online resources, which enables students to stay on track academically from home. Gaining a better understanding of the reasons behind missing school and the relation between absenteeism and academic achievement at various developmental stages is crucial to support successful learning trajectories.

The most highly predictive polygenic scores in the behavioural sciences are for cognitive traits, especially general cognitive ability (g) and educational attainment. We combined polygenic scores derived from genome-wide association studies of adult g and educational attainment to create adult 'polygenic g scores' which we used to chart the course of cognitive development of 10,000 white British children from toddlerhood through early adulthood. We integrated cross-sectional regression, latent growth curve, and confirmatory factor analysis to systematically characterise cognitive development. Polygenic g score showed minimal prediction in toddlerhood, modest prediction in childhood, and substantial prediction by early adulthood accounting for 12% of the variance. Higher polygenic g scores were associated with faster cognitive growth in latent growth models. Prediction was strongest for a cross-time latent cognitive factor (15%) capturing cognitive ability across development. By integrating polygenic prediction directly into a structural equation model framework, we provided a theoretical upper bound of genetic influences on g under minimal measurement error. We also examined the polygenic g score's prediction of educational achievement, behaviour problems, and anthropometric outcomes and found similar developmental increases in prediction for educational achievement. Together, our findings demonstrate that adult polygenic g scores can be a useful tool for charting the development of cognitive traits.

Previous research has demonstrated that children exhibit superior - as compared to adults - consolidation of newly acquired motor sequences across post-learning periods of wakefulness. Given that consolidation is thought to be supported by the reactivation of learning-related patterns of brain activity during the rest periods following active task practice, we hypothesized that the childhood advantage in offline consolidation may be linked to greater reactivation during post-learning wakefulness. Twenty-two children (7-11 years) and 23 adults (18-30 years) completed two sessions of a motor sequence learning task, separated by a 5-hour wake interval. Multivoxel analyses of task-related and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were employed to assess the persistence of learning-related patterns of neural activity into post-task rest epochs, reflective of reactivation processes. Behavioral results demonstrated the previously reported childhood advantage in offline consolidation over a post-learning wake interval. Imaging results revealed that children exhibited greater persistence of task-related hippocampal - but not putaminal - activity into post-learning rest as compared to adults. These findings suggest that the childhood advantage in awake motor memory consolidation may be supported, at least partially, by enhanced reactivation of task-dependent hippocampal activity patterns during offline epochs.

Motor adaptation involves the parallel operation of implicit recalibration and explicit re-aiming processes. During naturalistic learning, these systems interact, producing compound behavioral outputs that reflect their combined contributions. It remains unclear whether simultaneously engaged implicit and explicit processes form a single unified representation, or generate parallel memory representations that are merely co-expressed, and how consolidation transforms such representations. We addressed these questions across three visuomotor adaptation experiments (n = 120), in which the implicit process was engaged via gradual cursor rotation and the explicit process via target jump, by systematically manipulating the sequence of learning and the timing of expression. Immediately after learning, behavior reflected an inflexible, integrated memory that could not be decomposed by changing task demands. Following 24-hour consolidation, however, expression became component-selective, with implicit or explicit contributions retrieved in response to task demand. This reorganization had direct consequences on relearning, producing facilitation when the expressed and relearned components matched and interference when they mismatched. Moreover, when implicit adaptation was stabilized prior to compound learning, consolidation preserved the updated state rather than the original implicit representation. Together, these findings demonstrate that consolidation does not merely stabilize compound motor memories. Instead, it actively reorganizes them, transforming the initially integrated representations into independent, context-dependent components.

The corpus callosum is the largest commissure in the mammalian brain and plays a major role in supporting cognitive processes required for adapting to complex environments. Individuals born with Corpus Callosum Dysgenesis (CCD), characterized by malformations of the corpus callosum, commonly exhibit deficits in social navigation, abstract problem-solving, decision-making, and self-awareness. Metacognition is a key cognitive process that supports these functions; however, it has yet to be tested comprehensively in individuals with CCD. Over three experiments, and three CCD cohorts, we tested the impact of this neurodevelopmental disorder on perceptual accuracy, confidence judgements, and metacognitive efficiency using two variants of a Random Dot Kinematogram task within lab, online, and VR conditions. We found that individuals with CCD typically displayed normal perceptual accuracy but failed to adjust their confidence judgements in line with task difficulty. Computational modelling revealed that this difference was explained by lower metacognitive efficiency driven by consistently lower metacognitive sensitivity. Together, these results provide evidence that the corpus callosum plays a crucial role in supporting metacognition.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have persistent language learning difficulties and often perform poorly on pseudoword repetition, a task that probes phonological, memory, and speech-motor processes that support vocabulary acquisition. Research on the neural basis of pseudoword repetition in DLD is limited. We used whole-brain functional MRI (fMRI) to examine pseudoword repetition and repetition-based learning in 46 children with DLD (ages 10-15 years) and 71 age-matched children with typical language development. During scanning, children heard and repeated pseudowords paired with visual referents, allowing us to track learning-related changes in neural activity across repetitions. Repeated pseudoword production yielded comparable behavioural learning across groups, with faster productions by later repetitions. Post-scan, form-referent recognition was comparable across groups, whereas pseudoword repetition accuracy was lower in DLD. Pseudoword repetition engaged a distributed neural network, including inferior frontal cortex bilaterally (greater on the left), premotor and sensorimotor cortex, and posterior temporal and occipital regions. Group differences emerged primarily in regions where activity was task negative (i.e., below baseline or deactivated): lateral occipito-parietal cortex (posterior angular gyrus), medial parieto-occipital cortex (retrosplenial), and right posterior cingulate cortex. Learning-related decreases in activity were similar across groups, but region-of-interest analyses showed reduced leftward lateralisation of activity in inferior frontal gyrus in DLD. These findings suggest weaker disengagement of the default mode network during a linguistically demanding task in DLD. Although repetition-based pseudoword learning recruited similar neural mechanisms in both groups, these mechanisms may operate less efficiently in DLD, alongside reduced hemispheric specialisation in inferior frontal cortex. HighlightsO_LISimilar repetition-related neural attenuation across groups during pseudoword learning. C_LIO_LIReduced default-mode network suppression during pseudoword repetition in DLD. C_LIO_LIReduced left-hemisphere specialisation of inferior frontal cortex in DLD. C_LIO_LIRepetition-based learning in DLD supported by less efficient neural networks. C_LI

Goal-directed behavior often requires sustained effort across a sequence of interdependent decisions, yet the determinants of persistence in such contexts remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated how individuals regulate persistence in a novel sequential effort-based task in which they controlled an avatar through successive checkpoints to reach a final goal and could make repeated attempts following failure. At each attempt, participants could choose either to persist in the same task or to disengage toward an easier but less rewarding alternative. We found that decisions to persist or disengage were jointly shaped by multiple interacting factors. Disengagement increased with task difficulty and lower skill level. It also increased with repeated attempts and time-on-task, indexing fatigue, and with accumulated errors, indexing lack of progress. Conversely, proximity to the goal promoted persistence and shaped decision dynamics by reducing choice conflict during persistence decisions and increasing hesitation during disengagement near the goal. Notably, clearing the first checkpoint produced a sharp increase in persistence, suggesting that early success plays a pivotal role. Furthermore, persistence reflected both retrospective and prospective evaluations of effort, with prior investment promoting commitment and anticipated effort reducing it. Finally, disengagement was preceded by short-term performance decline but not by gradual increases in decision conflict, suggesting relatively abrupt strategy shifts following repeated failures. Together, these findings provide a comprehensive account of persistence in sequential effortful tasks, showing that decisions to persist or disengage are jointly shaped by multiple factors related to fatigue, (lack of) progress, goal proximity, and early success.

Mental fatigue is known to impair cognitive and motor performance, but its impact on motor learning remains unclear. This study examined how mental fatigue affects skill acquisition in a sequential finger-tapping task. Twenty-eight participants were assigned to either a mental fatigue group, which completed a thirty-minute Stroop task, or a control group, which watched a documentary of equivalent duration. Both groups then trained on the finger-tapping task across multiple practice blocks with brief rest periods. Overall motor skill improved similarly in both groups. However, mental fatigue altered the pattern of acquisition: participants in the fatigue group showed decreased performance during practice blocks, which was compensated by larger gains during inter-block rest periods. A strong negative correlation was observed between online decrements and offline improvements, indicating that greater declines during practice were associated with larger gains during rest. This study highlights the critical role of rest periods in maintaining learning under cognitively demanding conditions and provides insight into how internal states, such as mental fatigue, can selectively influence the expression of performance without compromising overall learning.

Play is a fundamental aspect of childhood and plays a crucial role in the development of creativity, yet its neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that more frequent play is associated with stronger functional integration among the default mode network (DMN), executive control network (CN), and salience network (SAL), as these cortical networks have been implicated in creativity in adults. In a preregistered study of infants and toddlers (Study 1; N = 143, 10 months-3 years, 67 boys, Baby Connectome Project), parent-reported play and imitation behaviors increased sharply from 1 to 2 years, and were associated with stronger within-DMN connectivity and DMN-CN coupling, controlling for age, sex, and head motion. In middle childhood (Study 2; N = 108, ages 4-11 years, 52 boys), parent-reported play frequency declined with age, as did cross-network coupling involving SAL. However, children who engaged more frequently in play showed higher DMN-SAL and CN-SAL connectivity. Finally, in a quasi-experimental comparison (Study 3; N = 45; ages 4-12 years, 20 boys), children enrolled in a curriculum that includes guided play (Montessori) showed higher DMN-SAL and DMN-CN connectivity than peers in traditional schools, suggesting that pedagogies that center child-led exploration might enable protracted brain network integration. Across these three studies, play was consistently associated with greater integration among DMN, SAL, and CN, a pattern previously linked to creativity in adults. Our findings offer a potential mechanism linking childhood play to later creativity through its role in supporting brain integration during development. Public Significant StatementO_LIPlay is widely believed to nurture childrens creativity, yet the brain mechanisms behind this link are not well understood. C_LIO_LIAcross three studies from infancy to middle childhood, we found that more frequent play was associated with stronger integration among brain networks tied to imagination, attention, and control. C_LIO_LIThese findings suggest that play may help build the neural foundation for later creative thinking. C_LI

The role of digital media in early childhood development remains highly debated, particularly regarding its impact on language acquisition. While excessive or unsupervised screen exposure has been linked to poorer outcomes, less is known about whether structured and interactive uses of technology can support learning. Building on previous research, we evaluated a brief, educator-supervised tablet-based intervention in 246 children aged 2-5 years from low- to middle-socioeconomic backgrounds attending public early education centers. Using a pre-post design with matched study and control groups, children completed 4-8 short training sessions (15 minutes each) involving interactive word-image associations spanning multiple linguistic categories. Preschoolers additionally engaged in prompted vocalization. Across age groups (2-3, 3-4, and 4-5 years), children in the intervention showed greater gains in language comprehension than controls, including receptive language in toddlers ({beta} = 0.49, p = 0.009), vocabulary and morphology in younger preschoolers ({beta} = 0.59-0.68, all p < 0.05), and grammar comprehension in older preschoolers ({beta} = 0.30, p = 0.038). These effects were consistent after accounting for child and parental characteristics. Together, these findings suggest that the developmental impact of digital media depends less on exposure itself than on how it is used. When embedded in structured, socially guided interactions, even brief tablet-based activities may support early language development

We readily detect structure in our environments, which in turn guides future learning. Disentangling this structure from the superficial features of a specific learning environment provides an especially strong basis for future generalization, but it remains unclear when and how this kind of abstraction occurs. Memory reactivation during sleep has been hypothesized to support such abstraction, but this has yet to be directly tested. Here we examined this hypothesis by teaching participants novel categories in which patterns of feature covariation were governed by different graph structures. Participants then learned a new category, defined by entirely different features, whose structure was either congruent or incongruent with a previously learned category. If structural knowledge is abstracted away from superficial features, it should facilitate transfer when structures are congruent. In Experiment 1, when two categories were learned in immediate succession, participants showed no transfer benefit, suggesting that structure understanding remained tied to the original features. In Experiment 2, we tested whether offline processing promotes abstraction. Participants either remained awake between learning phases spaced 3 hours apart, or took a nap during which a previously learned category was reactivated using targeted memory reactivation (TMR). Transfer benefits emerged only when the reactivated and target categories shared the same structure, and these benefits increased with the number of cues presented during slow-wave sleep. These findings provide the first direct evidence that memory reactivation during sleep promotes the abstraction of structure, enabling knowledge to transfer across learning episodes with no overlap in features.

Children frequently intervene in social conflicts by punishing violators or helping victims, yet the motivational mechanisms underlying such third-party altruistic behavior remain poorly understood. It remains unclear how children balance fairness concerns against self-interest, how these motivations interact with intervention costs and impact on outcomes, and whether gender and individual differences reflect distinct motivational structures. Here, we applied the motive cocktail model, which assumes that altruistic behavior arises from multiple prosocial motives, to dissociate motivations underlying third-party interventions. We studied 229 children aged 8-12 years (123 boys), an age when fairness and inequality aversion are reliably expressed. The third-party intervention task manipulated inequality between others, the personal cost of intervention, its impact on outcomes, and the form of intervention (punishment versus helping). Children intervened more as inequality increased and less as intervention costs rose, indicating a trade-off between moral benefits and self-interest. Gender differences emerged only under high-cost and high-impact conditions, with boys engaging in more punishment interventions. The motive cocktail model outperformed alternative models and revealed that boys showed stronger aversion to disadvantageous inequality and a greater tendency to reverse victims disadvantage than girls. Clustering analyses further identified distinct motivational profiles within each gender. These findings demonstrate that childrens third-party altruistic behavior is governed by multiple dissociable motives. This study provides a mechanistic account of how social motivations are organized and weighted during late childhood.

Humans possess an astounding ability to acquire complex movement sequences with limited practice. Motor sequence learning engages a distributed network of brain regions that show distinct learning-related changes: the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is predominantly involved early in learning, whereas the primary motor cortex (M1) becomes increasingly engaged later in learning. Because motor regions mature relatively earlier than the PFC during development, we examined how children and adults differ in the time course of neural changes underlying motor sequence learning. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared brain activation in children (7-10 years, N = 39, 17 female) and adults (20-32 years, N = 39, 19 female) during an associative visuomotor learning task. In both age groups, response times decreased with sequence repetition, with greater reductions in adults than in children. Across age groups, early learning was associated with heightened PFC activation, whereas later learning was characterized by increased activation in left M1 and bilateral supplementary motor area. Children and adults showed comparable decreases in PFC activation and PFC-M1 connectivity with sequence repetition. In contrast, adults exhibited larger learning-related increases in activation and stability of multivariate patterns in left M1. Together, these findings indicate that although both age groups engage the PFC similarly to support increased control demands in early learning, children show less pronounced modulation of M1 activation and representational similarity, suggesting that M1s capacity to form stable, sequence-related representations may still be developing in middle childhood. Significance StatementAlthough motor sequence learning has been widely studied in adults, less is known about how brain activation changes as learning progresses during childhood. This question is particularly relevant because prefrontal cortex (PFC) and primary motor cortex (M1) both support motor learning, but mature at different rates, with PFC developing relatively later than M1. Here, we used functional MRI to compare children (7-10 years) and adults performing a motor sequence learning task. We found no age-related differences in PFC engagement early in learning; instead children showed less refinement of M1 activation and neural representations over the course of learning than adults. These findings provide new insight into how the brain supports motor learning throughout development.

Pretend play is a hallmark behavior in childhood where children create nonliteral meanings. Empirical data supporting the role of social cognition and the decoupling from literality are still scarce during early development. We explored here how the comprehension of pretense affects the visual exploratory behavior of toddlers (n = 44) and adults (n = 65) when they were exposed to short video clips in which an actress performed either real actions (e.g., eating jelly) or pretend actions (e.g., pretending to eat with imaginary food), while varying the complexity of those actions. We analyzed participants exploration of the face in the videos as exploitation of social information. We showed that all observers paid more attention to the face in pretend scenarios than in real ones, measured as longer total looking time in adults and more fixations and revisits to the face in both age groups. We also found more gaze shifts (a measure of information sampling) between the face and the moving hand in the pretend videos in both age groups, mainly at the initial stages of the actions. Additionally, analyses of the scanpaths structure using gaze entropy showed less order in the exploration of pretend videos in both age groups, suggesting that pretense involved greater uncertainty and increased information seeking. The less structured trajectories were observed again mainly in complex pretend scenarios. Taken together, our gaze results indicate that from its developmental origins, the comprehension of pretense relies on social processes linked with information seeking and exploration. Significance StatementDevelopmental theories have long debated whether pretend games are born in conjunction with social capacities in the second year or become integrated later in life. Our study shows that, much like adults, toddlers visually explore pretend scenes gathering more social information and in a less structured manner compared to real-world scenarios, suggesting that the emerging capacity to play with the meaning of things is linked with that of thinking of other minds early in life.