Movement skills are practiced in order to optimize efficiency and enhance performance. While sequential motor tasks generally become more efficient with practice, the type of practice (random vs. blocked, part vs. whole practice) influences the structural relations between component parts. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the manner in which sequence information is used to optimizing response structures among children, adult, and elderly populations. This presentation is based upon recent laboratory studies of sequential movement tasks which demonstrate the importance of developing effective response structures to maximize performance (e.g., Park & Shea, 2002, Park, Shea, & Wilde, 2003). The results of these experiments demonstrate improvements in performance over practice for all age groups. However, the effective organization of response elements into subsequences results in the most fluent production of the movement sequence. College age and middle age adults clearly are adept at developing effective subsequences, whereas the development of effective subsequences declines in the elderly and is nearly non-existent in young children. Suggestions on how to enhance subsequence learning in children and older adults will be discussed.Keyword(s): older adult/aging issues, performance, research