The possible benefits of reduced errors in the motor skills acquisition of children

Motor learning is the process of acquiring movement skills [1]. Conventional (explicit) theories posit that motor skills are initially learned explicitly through cognitive processes that generate declarative knowledge [2]. Such knowledge is made up of information that learners can describe verbally [3], and includes rules for the execution of the desired movement [4]. With increasing proficiency, movement skills become automated and performance becomes implicit, such that the declarative knowledge becomes inaccessible or unnecessary for movement control [5]. Masters [6] developed an alternative, implicit motor learning approach, in which movements are acquired without early dependence on working memory; thereby possibly bypassing the declarative stage that is characteristic of early explicit learning [7].While there is considerable evidence to support the efficacy of an implicit motor learning approach, the bulk of the evidence comes from studies of adults. There is little evidence derived from children, whose information processing and cognitive abilities are still undergoing maturation [8]. As a consequence, the generalisability of implicit motor learning principles to children is unclear [9]. An understanding of children's movement skills learning is particularly important because engagement in motor activity is a prerequisite for development of the motor skills that are fundamental to functional tasks, school participation, and games and recreation [8] in later years of life. This paper aims to briefly review evidence from recent studies that have examined implicit motor learning in children using an errorless learning paradigm [10,11] and to explore the theoretical basis of implicit motor learning in children.Whether the experience of errors during motor learning is a desirable component or not is a subject of debate. One view is that skill learning benefits from mistakes [12], whereas another view is that the formation of correct motor programs is delayed by t