Fig. 5: Macro-offline performance gains.
From: Children exhibit a developmental advantage in the offline processing of a learned motor sequence
Sequential offline gains across the 5 h (a) and 24 h (c) offline periods for the four age groups. Shaded regions represent the kernel density estimate of the data, colored circles depict individual data, open circles represent group medians, and the horizontal lines depict group means65. CH children, AD adolescents, YA young adults, OA older adults. *p < 0.05 and ~p < 0.10 for pairwise group comparisons. n = 27 in each of the 4 age groups. Five-hour (b) and 24h (d) sequential offline gains are plotted as a function of age. Lines of fit from childhood into young adulthood: 5h gains = (−0.003 * age) + 0.075; 24 h gains = (0.872*age)−0.682. Lines of fit within older adulthood: 5h gains = (1.814e−6 * exp(0.256 * age)) + (−1.858e−6 * exp(0.256 * age)); 24h gains = (−0.006 * age) 0.381. For better visualization of the age-related changes, the scale of the y-axes was set to range from −0.4 to 0.4 and thus the young adult with the outlier 5h sequential gain (visible in a) is not depicted in (b). This individual, however, was included in the fitting procedure. Note that if this individual was excluded from statistical analyses, the pattern of results observed in (a) remains largely similar, with the exception that the pairwise difference between young and older adults becomes statistically significant (i.e., older adults exhibit worse offline consolidation over a 5h wake interval as compared to young adults).
