Abstract
Participants in this developmental study of hand-reaching were 25 adults and 109 children ages 4-15 years. On a judgment task, participants evaluated the reachability of a target, and the actual critical reach distance was measured. On the optimal task, participants held a target and then put it the position where it was easiest to put. The results for the judgment task showed that participants overestimated the critical reach distance, and that this error was exhibited significantly more often by young children (ages 4-12). Adults generally performed this task accurately. On the optimal task, young children put the target close to the critical space, whereas adults on average placed it at 60 percent of the distance of critical reach. These results are discussed in the context of participants' body-scale/size.
