Blöcher N, Ossandón J, Suljić K, Martel M, Heed T & Habets B

To locate touch, spatial codes related to body and environment must be integrated, called anatomical and external reference frames. The interplay of these frames has been studied by presenting touch to a hand and asking participants to indicate the touched limb, with limbs placed in a natural position in front of the participant or crossed over the body midline. Crossed limbs lead to longer reaction times and more errors, which has been explained as a conflict between the reference frames. However, previous studies have confounded stimulus and response location. In the current study, 75 children aged 6 to 12 performed a tactile stimulus-response task with dissociated stimulus and response limbs, allowing us to disentangle the development of tactile stimulus coding and response coding in the context of tactile limb assignment. Results show a developmental trajectory of response processing conflict in younger kids towards stimulus processing conflicts in older children.