Exploring Associations between Motor Skill Assessments in Children With, Without, and At-Risk for Developmental Coordination Disorder
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Background:
We compared children with, at-risk for, or without developmental coordination disorder (DCD) on the Test of Gross Motor Development (TGMD-2) and the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC) through (a) correlations, (b) gender and age comparisons, (c) cross tab analyses, and (d) factor analyses.
Method:
Children (N = 424; age range: 4–10 years) from southern Brazil completed the TGMD-2 and MABC and placed into groups (DCD: ≤ 5th%, n = 58; at-risk: > 5th to ≤ 15th%, n = 133; typically developing (TD) >16th%, n = 233).
Results:
The strongest correlation was between total performance on the TGMD-2 and MABC (r = .37). No gender differences were found for performance on the MABC while boys performed better than girls on the TGMD-2. Cross tab analyses indicated a high level of agreement for children who performed in the lowest percentiles on each assessment. Factor analyses suggested that, for both the TD and at-risk groups, three factors loaded on the motor assessments. In contrast, the DCD group loaded on a sport skill, general skill, and a manipulative skill factor, accounting for 42.3% of the variance.
Conclusions::
Evidence suggests that children who perform very poorly on one assessment are likely to perform poorly on the other. Children with DCD may have sports-related skill deficiencies.
Nadia C. Valentini is with the School of Physical Education at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. Nancy Getchel, Ling-Yin Liang, and Daphne Golden are with the Department of Kinesiology and Applied Physiology at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA. Samuel W. Logan is with the School of Biological and Population Health Sciences at Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA. Mary E. Rudisill is with the School of Kinesiology at Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA. Leah E. Robinson is with the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
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