Hermundur Sigmundsson

The relationship between motor competence, physical fitness and self-perception in children.

AIM The aim of the current research was to explore the relationship between motor competence, physical fitness and self-perception, and to study to which extent this relationship may vary by gender. METHODS A sample of 67 children (mean age 11.46 years, SD 0.27) completed Harters Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC), the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC) and the Test of Physical Fitness (TPF) to assess self-perception, motor competence and physical fitness. RESULTS The SPPC was stronger related to total score on TPF than to total score on MABC. However, when looking at boys and girls separately, this result was found for the boys only. In the group in general, total scores on both TPF and MABC correlated significantly with three of the domains of SPPC (social acceptance, athletic competence and physical appearance) and general self-worth. This relationship varied by gender. Interestingly, TPF was highest correlated with perception of athletic competence in boys but with perception of social acceptance in girls. A high and significant correlation was found between physical fitness and motor competence for both genders. CONCLUSION The results indicated a strong relationship between physical fitness, motor competence and self-perception in children that varied by gender. This implies that all these factors are essential contributions in order to facilitate participation in physical activity in children.

Inter- and intra-sensory modality matching in children with hand-eye co-ordination problems

Abstract Inter- and intra-sensory modality matching by 8-year-old children diagnosed as having hand-eye co-ordination problems (HECP) and by a control group of children without such problems were tested using a target-location and pointing task. The task required the children to locate target pins visually (seen target), with the hand (felt target) or in combination (felt and seen target), while pointing to the located target was always carried out without vision. The most striking finding, for both the control and the HECP children, was the superiority of performance when the target had to be located visually. When combined scores for both hands were analysed, the HECP children showed inferior performance to the control children in both inter- and intra-modal matching. Analyses of the scores achieved with the preferred and non-preferred hand separately, however, demonstrated that the differences between the HECP and the control children could, in the main, be attributed to lowered performances when the non-preferred hand was used for pointing to the target. When pointing with the preferred hand, the only significant difference between the groups was when the target was visually located, the control children showing superior performance. Pointing with the non-preferred hand gave rise to significant differences, in favour of the control children, when the target was located visually, with the hand or in combination. These findings suggest that earlier studies, using only the preferred hand or a combination of the scores of both hands, might need to be qualified. Putative neurological disorders in the HECP children are invoked to account for the poor performance with the non-preferred hand.

Measuring physical fitness in children who are 5 to 12 years old with a test battery that is functional and easy to administer.

Background Valid and reliable measures of childrens physical fitness are necessary for investigating the relationship between childrens physical fitness and childrens health. Objective The objective of this study was to estimate the feasibility, internal consistency, convergent construct validity, and test-retest reliability of a new, functional, and easily administered test battery for measuring childrens physical fitness. Design The study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey applying physical fitness tests across age groups 5 to 12 years. Methods Each of the 9 items in the test battery consists of a compound motor activity that recruits various combinations of endurance, strength (force-generating capacity), agility, balance, and motor coordination: standing broad jump, jumping a distance of 7 m on 2 feet, jumping a distance of 7 m on one foot, throwing a tennis ball with one hand, pushing a medicine ball with 2 hands, climbing wall bars, performing a 10 × 5 m shuttle run, running 20 m as fast as possible, and performing a reduced Cooper test (6 minutes). The test battery was administered to 195 children (aged 5–12 years) from 4 schools and kindergartens in Norway. Results Overall, the children in each age group were able to perform all of the test items, indicating the suitability of the test battery for children as young as 5 years of age. With increasing age, total scores improved linearly, indicating the adequate sensitivity of the test battery for the age range examined in this study. Furthermore, even with the modest sample size used in this study, total scores were normally distributed, thereby fulfilling the necessary assumptions of most statistical procedures. For investigating the reliability of the test battery, 24 children (mean age=8.6 years) in one class were retested 1 week later. Test-retest correlations were high, with intraclass correlation coefficients for individual test items and total score ranging from .54 to .92. Limitations The survey was limited to samples of 5- to 12-year-old Norwegian children. Larger samples in each age group are essential for establishing age- and sex-specific norms. Conclusions These promising results warrant further development of the test battery, including standardization and normalization based on a large, representative sample.

WE CAN CURE YOUR CHILD'S CLUMSINESS ! A REVIEW OF INTERVENTION METHODS

Intervention procedures for treatment of clumsiness have come in many guises. We have looked at some of the most powerful methods put forward in the past 30 years--Perceptual-motor training (PMT), Sensory Integration Therapy (SIT), and some promising new approaches. Both the PMT and the SIT have been heavily criticised. It is hard to find support for the idea that the programmes improve academic skills or that they have more than a limited effect on perceptual-motor development as claimed. The more recently introduced Kinaesthetic training is shown to have an effect on general motor competence but that this may be better explained in terms of the general principles on which this training procedure lies rather than the influence on Kinaesthesis per se. Since other recent studies have also shown a dependence on similar general principles, it might be asked whether it is the teacher rather than the programmes that accounts for the differences shown between different intervention programmes.

From Children to Adults: Motor Performance across the Life-Span

The life-span approach to development provides a theoretical framework to examine the general principles of life-long development. This study aims to investigate motor performance across the life span. It also aims to investigate if the correlations between motor tasks increase with aging. A cross-sectional design was used to describe the effects of aging on motor performance across age groups representing individuals from childhood to young adult to old age. Five different motor tasks were used to study changes in motor performance within 338 participants (7–79 yrs). Results showed that motor performance increases from childhood (7–9) to young adulthood (19–25) and decreases from young adulthood (19–25) to old age (66–80). These results are mirroring results from cognitive research. Correlation increased with increasing age between two fine motor tasks and two gross motor tasks. We suggest that the findings might be explained, in part, by the structural changes that have been reported to occur in the developing and aging brain and that the theory of Neural Darwinism can be used as a framework to explain why these changes occur.

Are poor mathematics skills associated with visual deficits in temporal processing

Developmental learning disabilities such as dyslexia and dyscalculia have a high rate of co-occurrence in pediatric populations, suggesting that they share underlying cognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms. Dyslexia and other developmental disorders with a strong heritable component have been associated with reduced sensitivity to coherent motion stimuli, an index of visual temporal processing on a millisecond time-scale. Here we examined whether deficits in sensitivity to visual motion are evident in children who have poor mathematics skills relative to other children of the same age. We obtained psychophysical thresholds for visual coherent motion and a control task from two groups of children who differed in their performance on a test of mathematics achievement. Children with math skills in the lowest 10% in their cohort were less sensitive than age-matched controls to coherent motion, but they had statistically equivalent thresholds to controls on a coherent form control measure. Children with mathematics difficulties therefore tend to present a similar pattern of visual processing deficit to those that have been reported previously in other developmental disorders. We speculate that reduced sensitivity to temporally defined stimuli such as coherent motion represents a common processing deficit apparent across a range of commonly co-occurring developmental disorders.

Sex differences in lateralisation of fine manual skills in children

Abstract.One hundred and twelve children (55 boys and 57 girls) were tested using two tasks taken from the Movement Assessment Battery for Children. The girls had a larger between-hands asymmetry than boys on the threading nuts on bolt task, thus indicating they were more lateralised. On the other task, placing pegs, no such sex differences were found. We present our findings as a warning to others that even though two tasks are assumed to measure the same, in this case unimanual performance, differences in task constraints will exist. Such differences may constitute a confounding factor when trying to infer about lateralisation based on behavioural tasks.

Hand preference in children with developmental coordination disorders: cause and effect?

Inter- and intra-modal matching by eight-year-old children diagnosed as having hand-eye coordination problems (HECP) and categorized as left-handed, together with a left-handed control group of children without such problems, were tested using a manual sensory matching task. The task required the children to locate target pins, visually (seen target), proprioceptively (felt target) or in combination (felt and seen target), while matching to the located target was always carried out without vision. Performance was superior when the target was located visually or visually/proprioceptively for both groups of children. These results question the conclusion that intra-modal will always be more accurate than inter-modal matching. When the combined scores for both hands were analyzed, the HECP children showed inferior performance to the control children in both inter- and intra-modal matching. Separate right and left hand analyses, demonstrated that the differences between the HECP group and control children could be accounted for by lowered performances when the right hand (nonpreferred) was used to match the located target position. Putative neurological disorders related to the development of the hemisphere controlling the nonpreferred hand (left hemisphere) are invoked to account for the poor performance with the nonpreferred hand of the HECP children.

Baby swimming: exploring the effects of early intervention on subsequent motor abilities

AIM The aim of the study was to explore the effects of baby swimming on subsequent motor abilities. BACKGROUND A range of motor abilities was examined in 4-year-old children who had previously participated in a programme of baby swimming (n= 19) and compared with a matched group of coevals who had not had this experience (n= 19). RESULTS As predicted from the nature of the exercises that comprise the programme, the effects of baby swimming were restricted to abilities associated with prehension and balance. CONCLUSIONS Suggestions are made as to how the theme of this hypothesis-generating, demonstration study can be pursued in the future with more rigorous experimental controls and applications to children with disabilities and impairments.

Individual Differences in Motor Timing and Its Relation to Cognitive and Fine Motor Skills

The present study investigated the relationship between individual differences in timing movements at the level of milliseconds and performance on selected cognitive and fine motor skills. For this purpose, young adult participants (N = 100) performed a repetitive movement task paced by an auditory metronome at different rates. Psychometric measures included the digit-span and symbol search subtasks from the Wechsler battery as well as the Raven SPM. Fine motor skills were assessed with the Purdue Pegboard test. Motor timing performance was significantly related (mean r = .3) to cognitive measures, and explained both unique and shared variance with information-processing speed of Ravens scores. No significant relations were found between motor timing measures and fine motor skills. These results show that individual differences in cognitive and motor timing performance is to some extent dependent upon shared processing not associated with individual differences in manual dexterity.