Cognitive procedural learning among children and adolescents with or without spastic cerebral palsy: The differential effect of age

Introduction: Children learn to engage their surroundings skillfully, adopting implicit knowledge of complex regularities and associations. Probabilistic classification learning (PCL) is a type of cognitive procedural learning in which different cues are probabilistically associated with specific outcomes. Little is known about the effects of developmental disorders on cognitive skill acquisition. Methods: Twenty-four children and adolescents with cerebral palsy (CP) were compared to 24 typically developing (TD) youth in their ability to learn probabilistic associations. Performance was examined in relation to general cognitive abilities, level of motor impairment and age. Results: Improvement in PCL was observed for all participants, with no relation to IQ. An age effect was found only among TD children. Conclusions: Learning curves of children with CP on a cognitive procedural learning task differ from those of TD peers and do not appear to be age sensitive.