Abstract
Cortical body size representations are distorted in the adult, from low-level motor and sensory maps to higher levels multisensory and cognitive representations. Little is known about how such representations are built and evolve during infancy and childhood. Here we investigated how hand size is represented in typically developing children aged 6 to 10. Participants were asked to estimate their hand size using two different sensory modalities (visual or haptic). We found a distortion (underestimation) already present in the youngest children. Crucially, such distortion increases with age and regardless of the sensory modality used to access the representation. Finally, underestimation is specific for the body as no bias was found for object estimation. This study suggests that the brain does not keep up with the natural body growth. However, since motor behavior nor perception were impaired, the distortion seems functional and/or compensated for, for proper interaction with the external environment.
Highlights
Cortical body size representations are distorted in the adult, from low-level motor and sensory maps to higher levels multisensory and cognitive representations
One exception worth mention here is the well-known Scale Error shown by young children up to 30 months of age
Since the pervasiveness of distortions in body representation in adults, here we investigated whether they are present in children to assess whether body representations are always distorted or distortions emerge at a particular age
Summary
Cortical body size representations are distorted in the adult, from low-level motor and sensory maps to higher levels multisensory and cognitive representations. The first level of body representation explored by previous studies focused on the integration of proprioceptive/postural and tactile bodily cues. Such ability seems to develop quite early, as changes in body postures have been shown to affect tactile discrimination in babies as young as 8 months[7,8]. While covering several aspects of body representations, the available literature on children is quite spare and fragmented On one hand, it mainly focuses on body posture, almost entirely ignoring body size representation, despite it changes the most in children and is critical for motor control and behavior. A second target object was presented to the left and participant was asked to judge whether the target was smaller or larger than the reference
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