Bilateral Motor Coordination in 5- to 9-Year-Old Children: A Pilot Study (original) (raw)
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Assessment of motor coordination in students aged 6 to 11 years
Motor coordination is a complex slowly-acquired evolutionary process. This study aims to assess the level of motor coordination in students aged 6 to 11 years and analyze the connections between fundamental motor skills resulting from the tasks that form the 3JS test. A sample of 2649 students was used. The findings show that there are numerous differences in the maturity of motor coordination depending on the age and sex variables: the level of motor coordination increases as the age increases but this rise is lower at every age from 6-11 years and there is a higher rise in the period between 6-8 years. In order to provide an appropriate frame of reference for every age and sex, some normative tables that will allow Physical Education teachers and researchers to evaluate the level of motor coordination are suggested. The results of this study show a higher percentage of girls in the intervals of a normal, good and very good level of motor coordination. The study of the correlations shows that there is a significant relationship among the fundamental motor skills included in the motor coordination tests (<0.01). The highest dependences are found between the following skills: conduction and kick (0.62), conduction and rebound (0.58) and kick and throw (0.75).
The latest guidelines recommend early identification of children with motor impairments using a standardized norm-referenced test. Motor coordination difficulties in developmental age have been studied extensively over recent years, with experimental literature on developmental coordination disorder (DCD) suggesting that motor proficiency assessments depend on the nature of the task at hand. In this article we reviewed 14 assessment tools to measure movement performance in childhood and adolescence, which are often referred to in an international context. This updated review aims to compare motor tests depending on a) the nature of the tasks included in the battery (i.e., questionnaire and clinical examination), b) psychometric properties, and c) cultural adaptation to relevant developmental norms. Finally, implications for diagnosis and clinical practice are discussed. Considering there are several tests used for DCD, it is important to better define their reliability and validity in different cultures in order to better compare the validation studies and select the most appropriate test to use in the assessment procedure.
Occupational Therapy International, 2009
This study examined aspects of reliability and validity of the bilateral coordination and motor sequencing items of the Assessment of Motor Coordination and Dexterity (AMCD) for Brazilian children ages 4, 6 and 8 years old. The AMCD aims to identify children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). A total of 84 children were evaluated. Among the 35 items piloted, all but one presented interrater reliability above 0.80 and 16 (45.7%) items presented intraclass correlation coeffi cient over 0.60 for test-retest reliability. Most items were sensitive to age difference and only items involving ball handling exhibited signifi cant gender differences. As a result, this section of the AMCD could be reduced to the 20 items that were found to be reliable and more discriminative for age-related differences. This study advances on the development of the AMCD, but a limitation was the noninclusion of children with DCD. Future research should investigate whether the selected items are useful in differentiating the motor skills of children with and without coordination problems.
Journal of sports science & medicine, 2010
The purpose was to determine the level of agreement between the Motoriktest für Vier- bis Sechsjährige Kinder [MOT 4-6] and the Movement Assessment Battery for Children [M-ABC]. 48 preschool children participated in the study (Mean age = 5 years, 6 months, SD = 3 months). There was high classification agreement (90%) between both tests. A Kappa correlation coefficient (0.67) provided moderately strong support for convergent validity. Less agreement was shown in identification of motor difficulties (58%). This was reflected by lower correlation coefficients on the fine movement cluster and test item level. The MOT 4-6 showed values within the range of similar movement skill performance assessment protocols. Because of its specific focus it may be of meaningful value to assess movement skill competence in typically developing preschool children (ages 4 to 6). Key pointsThe Motoriktest für Vier- bis Sechsjährige Kinder (MOT 4-6) showed values within the range of similar motor performan...
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Motor coordination has a crucial role in various physical activities and sports, highlighting its significance in overall movement proficiency and performance. This study aimed to compare motor coordination in children engaged in multisport versus swimming activities. The participants of this study included 180 boys and girls (girls = 87) aged 8.25 years ± 0.89. A total of three groups were included: group 1 consisted of inactive children, group 2 included children participating in swimming, and group 3 included children enrolled in multisport. Motor coordination was assessed using the Kiphard–Schilling body coordination test, evaluated by motor quotient (MQ): walking backwards, hopping for height, jumping sideways, and moving sideways. Additionally, a total motor quotient (Total MQ) was calculated based on the performance in all four tests. ANOVA revealed a significant difference in Total MQ and all subtests between the groups (p < 0.01). A significant difference in Total MQ was...
Preschool-aged children’s jumps: Imitation performances
Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 2010
Imitative behavior underlaid by perception and action links during children's development in complex locomotor skills has been the object of relatively few studies. In order to explore children's motor coordination modes, 130 children divided into five age groups from 3.5 to 7.5 years were instructed to imitate jumping tasks in spontaneous motor situation and in various imitative contexts by an adult providing verbal orders and gestural demonstrations. Their conformity to the model, stability and variability scores were coded from a video analysis when they performed jumps with obstacles. To evaluate their posturalmotor control level, the durations of the preparatory phase and jumping flights were also timed. Results showed that all age groups generated the demonstrator's goal but not necessarily the same coordination modes of jumping. In imitation with temporal proximity, the model helped the youngest age groups to adopt his coordination modes and stabilized only the oldest age groups' performances starting from 5.5 years old, without effect on learning imitation. Differences between the youngest and oldest children in the jump duration suggested that the reproduction of a complex motor activity such as jumping with a one foot take-off would require resolution and adjustment of main postural stability.
European journal of pediatrics, 2018
Motor skills are interrelated with essential domains of childhood such as cognitive and social development. Thus, the evaluation of motor skills and the identification of atypical or delayed motor development is crucial in pediatric practice (e.g., during well-child visits). Parental reports on motor skills may serve as possible indicators to decide whether further assessment of a child is necessary or not. We compared parental reports on fundamental motor skills performance level (e.g., hopping, throwing), based on questions frequently asked in pediatric practice, with a standardized motor test in 389 children (46.5% girls/53.5% boys, M age = 3.8 years, SD = 0.5, range 3.0-5.0 years) from the Swiss Preschoolers' Health Study (SPLASHY). Motor skills were examined using the Zurich Neuromotor Assessment 3-5 (ZNA3-5), and parents filled in an online questionnaire on fundamental motor skills performance level. The results showed that the answers from the parental report correlated o...
Normative values of the motor competence assessment (MCA) from 3 to 23 years of age
Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 2019
Objectives: Growing evidence of the importance of motor competence for developing a healthy lifestyle has been established in the last decade. Nonetheless, no single instrument or observation tool have been able to fully measure this construct, particularly because most were built for the diagnosis of children in risk for motor impairment; are limited to a few years of the developmental span; lack objectivity in the assessment protocols; or do not include the locomotor, stability, and manipulative components. This led to the difficulty of comparing researches, and longitudinally follow children into adulthood. Recently, a novel proposal to assess motor competence was presented-the Motor Competence Assessment (MCA)-and this study aims to present the MCA normative data from 3-to-23 years. Design and methods: Two thousand and eighty-seven participants (1102 boys) between 3 and 23 years of age were evaluated in the MCA (standing long jump, 10 m shuttle run, throwing velocity, kicking velocity, lateral jumps, shifting platforms). Results for each test were introduced in the LMS Chartmaker 2.3. The best model for test and sex was used, resulting in normative curves and percentile values. Results: Final norms showed a good fit to the instrument developmental expectations, allowing to differentiate and classify performances along the age interval. Conclusions: The MCA age-and sex-normative values allow to assess motor competence from childhood to early adulthood. Future directions will include obtaining a total MCA score and the normative scores for the MCA components (stability, locomotion, object control), and to expand the norms to adulthood and old age.