Adolescent Awkwardness: Alterations in Temporal Control Characteristics of Posture with Maturation and the Relation to Movement Exploration

A phenomenon called adolescent awkwardness is believed to alter motor control, but underlying mechanisms remain largely unclear. Since adolescents undergo neurological and anthropometrical changes during this developmental phase, we hypothesized that adolescents control their movements less tightly and use a different coordinative structure compared to adults. Moreover, we tested if emerging differences were driven by body height alterations between age groups. Using 39 reflective markers, postural movements during tandem stance with eyes open and eyes closed of 12 adolescents (height 168.1 ± 8.8 cm) and 14 adults were measured, in which 9 adults were smaller or equal than 180 cm (177.9 ± 3.0 cm) and 5 taller or equal than 190 cm (192.0 ± 2.5 cm). A principal component analysis (PCA) was used to extract the first nine principal movement components (PM(k)). The contribution of each PM(k) to the overall balancing movement was determined according to their relative variance share (rVAR(k)) and tightness of motor control was examined using the number of times that the acceleration of each PM(k) changed direction (N(k)). Results in rVAR(k) did not show significant differences in coordinative structure between adolescents and adults, but N(k) revealed that adolescents seem to control their movements less tightly in higher-order PM(k), arguably due to slower processing times and missing automatization of postural control or potential increases in exploration. Body height was found to not cause motor control differences between age groups.