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The principles of motor learning have been applied in neurological rehabilitation for years. The underlying assumption is that these principles that have been identified in research on healthy individuals would also apply to those with neurological disorders, making them highly relevant for rehabilitation. However, there is currently no tool dedicated to evaluating motor learning abilities, that refers to procedural perceptual-motor learning (PPML) abilities, before rehabilitation. To address this gap, we created a new tool assessing PPML (EVALuation de l’APprentissage Procedural [EVAL_APP]), based on two experimental tasks known to assess motor sequence learning and visuomotor adaptation. The study aimed to determine whether this tool is suitable for clinical practice and meets care needs by conducting a cross-sectional online survey of psychomotor and occupational therapists in France. The results show that professionals are interested in measuring PPML, and over half of them indicated that they would use the tool. Participants who felt trained about PPML responded positively to the relevance of PPML assessment and to the future use of the EVAL_APP tool. While some parameters of the EVAL_APP tool are well adjusted, others may need improvement to be adapted for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, including Developmental Coordination Disorder. The results are encouraging for pursuing the conception of the new tool by considering the opinion of professionals specialized in pediatric rehabilitation.

Children’s motor competence (MC) levels tend to be low, and the investigation of variables that facilitate skillfulness is an important concern. The socioecological model is a useful framework to explore factors that influence MC and to inform the development of targeted interventions. This cross-sectional study aimed to perform an exploratory analysis of MC correlates among children. The sample comprised 267 second- and fourth-grade children (120 female; M _age = 102 months, SD = 14 months) from six primary schools. The children’s legal guardian questionnaire collected sociodemographic, behavioral, and family variables. MC was assessed with the Motorische Basiskompetenzen battery. Data analysis involved simple and multiple regression models. The mean total Motorische Basiskompetenzen score was 8.9 (3.4) out of a maximum score of 16. Sex, age, body mass index, and physical activity and sports clubs were significantly related to total MC in all models (p < .05). The final model predicted a variance of 24.5%, adjusted R ² = .245, F(20, 246) = 5.32, p < .001, with male sex (B = 2.03) and organized physical activity (B = 0.35) being positively associated with total MC. Fourth grade (B = −3.6) and body mass index (B = −0.23) were negatively associated with MC. The study provides provisional evidence for the role of some sociodemographic and behavioral factors in MC development, which are important to design future MC interventions.

Introduction/Background: In 2016, the Adolescent Motor Competence Questionnaire (AMCQ) was developed in Australia. The AMCQ was developed to assess perceived motor competence in adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 years. The 26 items represent four factors: participation in physical activity and sports, activities of daily living, public performance, and peer comparison. Aims/Objectives: Currently, no validated German-language self-report screening instrument exists for assessing perceived motor competence among adolescents. This study aimed to validate the German version of the AMCQ (AMCQ-GER). Methods/Approach: The German translation’s factor structure and psychometric properties were analyzed based on a community sample of 635 healthy children and adolescents between 10 and 18 years of age (12.9 ± 2.31 years, 321 boys and 312 girls) and 100 healthy young adults between 19 and 30 years of age (23.0 ± 2.92 years, 49 men and 51 women). The previously validated cutoff score of ≤83 out of 104 was used to group the sample into high and low motor competence. Results: The mean AMCQ-GER score was 84.9 (SD = 8.59), and 38.8% of the participants identified with low motor competence. The principle component analysis revealed clear evidence for a three-factorial structure comprising physical activity and sports, general clumsiness, and activities of daily living (with an explained variance of 29.2%). Reliability for all scales was excellent, with a McDonald’s ϖ of at least .70. The overall conclusion of the Rasch analysis supported the confirmatory factor analysis, although with an overall smaller number of items (18 instead of 26). The AMCQ-GER was positively correlated with age (.26**) and participation in organized club sports (.19**). It was negatively correlated with body mass index (−.23**) and school grade in physical activity (−.40**). Conclusions/Relevance: Our rigorous validation protocol has generated a remarkable reproduction of the AMCQ in German. These results suggest that the language and structure of the questionnaire is appropriate for German-speaking countries.

Purpose: This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the ability to adjust grip strength by comparing the characteristics of force generation and relaxation from childhood to adulthood. Method: This study included 225 participants aged 6, 11, 17, and 19–23 years (adults) who performed isometric hand-grip force as follows: maximum, half generation, and half relaxation. The force was recorded, and relative values and errors were calculated for half tasks. Results: The maximum task values increased with age, but there was no significant age difference between 17-year-olds and adults. The difference between sexes was significant; males were stronger than females in both 17-year-olds and adults. Both sexes in all age groups had greater errors in half relaxation than in half generation tasks. Females had negatively greater constant error than males in half tasks. The errors of 6-year-olds were greater than the other age groups in half tasks. Conclusion: There is a developmental trend for producing maximal strength that is similar across sexes until adolescence when males are stronger and females plateau. The ability of force relaxation was more difficult to accurately control than force generation for all age groups and was adult-like by middle childhood.

Knowledge of results (KR), particularly its informational role, has often been regarded as redundant for learning interception-like tasks, such as coincidence–anticipation timing tasks. However, it is possible that the KR’s guiding effect might be detrimental to motor adaptation, instead of only redundant, leading to a dependency on KR and steering the sensorimotor system away from relevant information of the task. In this study, we aimed to investigate KR’s effect on learning a coincidence–anticipation timing tasks and on the adaptation to unpredictable perturbations. Two groups of participants practiced a coincidence–anticipation timing tasks with or without KR on 1 day and underwent testing the next day for learning (Retention test) and for adaptation to unpredictable perturbations (Exposure phase). Both groups exhibited similar learning results but failed to adapt to the perturbations, contradicting the assumption of negative guidance effects of KR and the positive effects of relying solely on intrinsic information (no KR). These findings suggest that motor adaptation may require specific information during the acquisition process, highlighting for more systematic analyses to understand this phenomenon better. Such insights could have practical implications in contexts like sports and rehabilitation, by providing learners with appropriate information for acquiring adaptive internal representations of tasks.

Previous studies have identified patterns of coordinated control when adults combine gait and grasping. What remains unclear is whether the coordination of these two tasks differs between adolescent and adult groups. Groups of adults and adolescents were asked to walk across an instrumented gait mat in three conditions: walk forward, walk and grasp a small target, and walk and grasp a large target. Spatiotemporal measures of gait/gait variability and grasp/grasp variability were quantified. Both adolescents and young adults exhibited decreased velocity, decreased step-extremity ratio, and increased percent of gait cycle spent in double support when grasping compared to walking alone. The major influence of grasping was seen during the final step before grasp in both groups. Change scores between walk forward and walk and grasp conditions were larger for adolescents. Furthermore, spatiotemporal measures of gait and grasping were more variable in adolescents. These results suggest that superimposing grasp onto gait is more challenging for adolescents than young adults. The challenges associated with combining these two tasks is particularly evident in the last step prior to object contact and suggests that the increased planning and execution demands required to perform these coordinated skills affects adolescents to a greater extent than young adults.