Transcoding number words to typed multi-digit numerals: revisiting the strange case in Arabic bilinguals.

Language-specific effects are observed in the performance of numerical tasks. We evaluated the effect of the number word system (non-inverted; decade-unit format HDU vs inverted; unit-decade format HUD) in multi-digit numbers on transcoding performance among Arabic-Hebrew bilingual university students. Both languages are written right-to-left, but only in Arabic the sequence of number words is inverted, with units stipulated before decades (e.

Effective learning and retention of braille letter tactile discrimination skills in children with developmental dyslexia.

Children with developmental dyslexia (DD) may differ from typical readers in aspects other than reading. The notion of a general deficit in the ability to acquire and retain procedural ('how to') knowledge as long-term procedural memory has been proposed. Here, we compared the ability of elementary school children, with and without reading difficulties (DD, typical readers), to improve their tactile discrimination with practice and tested the children's ability to retain the gains.

A matter of time: rapid motor memory stabilization in childhood.

Are children better than adults in acquiring new skills ('how-to' knowledge) because of a difference in skill memory consolidation? Here we tested the proposal that, as opposed to adults, children's memories for newly acquired skills are immune to interference by subsequent experience. The establishment of long-term memory for a trained movement sequence in adults requires a phase of memory consolidation. This results in substantial delayed, 'offline', performance gains, which nevertheless remain susceptible to interference by subsequent competing motor experience for several hours after training, unless sleep is afforded in the interval.

Sequence specific motor performance gains after memory consolidation in children and adolescents.

Memory consolidation for a trained sequence of finger opposition movements, in 9- and 12-year-old children, was recently found to be significantly less susceptible to interference by a subsequent training experience, compared to that of 17-year-olds. It was suggested that, in children, the experience of training on any sequence of finger movements may affect the performance of the sequence elements, component movements, rather than the sequence as a unit; the latter has been implicated in the learning of the task by adults. This hypothesis implied a possible childhood advantage in the ability to transfer the gains from a trained to the reversed, untrained, sequence of movements.

Sex differences in motor performance and motor learning in children and adolescents: an increasing male advantage in motor learning and consolidation phase gains.

We investigated gender differences in motor performance in 9-, 12-, and 17-year-olds. The tasks included simple thumb tapping (sTT), handwriting (HW) and finger-to-thumb opposition sequence (FOS) learning. In sTT there was a significant advantage for the 17-year-old males.

Reduced susceptibility to interference in the consolidation of motor memory before adolescence.

Are children superior to adults in consolidating procedural memory? This notion has been tied to "critical," early life periods of increased brain plasticity. Here, using a motor sequence learning task, we show, in experiment 1, that a) the rate of learning during a training session, b) the gains accrued, without additional practice, within a 24 hours post-training interval (delayed consolidation gains), and c) the long-term retention of these gains, were as effective in 9, 12 and 17-year-olds and comparable to those reported for adults. However, a follow-up experiment showed that the establishment of a memory trace for the trained sequence of movements was significantly more susceptible to interference by a subsequent motor learning experience (practicing a reversed movement sequence) in the 17-year-olds compared to the 9 and 12-year-olds.