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Using Nicholls’ developmental component as a framework, the purpose of this study was to examine children’s understanding of luck and ability in the physical domain. Children (N = 144, 8 boys and 8 girls at each age from 5 to 13 years) enrolled in public schools participated individually in a 30-min session in which they were shown 2 similar games; one required luck and the other required skill to perform successfully. Participants received an explanation of the games and were told of youngsters who had tried unsuccessfully to play them. Participants were interviewed, and their responses were analyzed via a Piagetian structural developmental method. Results revealed that the 4 levels of understanding of luck and ability Nicholls and Miller (1985) described were relevant to the physical domain. Furthermore, the Spearman rho coefficient indicated a strong positive relationship between children’s age and their level of understanding of luck and ability.

This commentary examines the argument for early sport specialization versus sport sampling from a physical growth and motor development perspective. Three developmental frameworks are examined (Mountain of Motor Development, Developmental Model of Sport Participation, Spirals of Engagement Trajectory model) to make the case that a broad base of fundamental motor skill competence is necessary in the early years before sport specialization in the adolescent years. Early sport specialization is criticized from the standpoint of increased risk for overuse injury, concerns about long-term growth, and the fact that early and intense practice schedules often do not differentiate elite versus nonelite athletes. A strong argument is made for early sport sampling to acquire a broad base of fundamental motor skills to apply to different sports, and to allow physical maturity to develop before specializing in sport. Such an approach also better equips a child to be active across the lifespan.

We evaluated several behavioral coaching procedures with two young adults who had intellectual and developmental disabilities and were preparing for a Special Olympics track event. The primary dependent measure was their time running a 100 m sprint. Following a baseline phase, the athletes were coached to improve sprint times through different combinations of goal setting, performance feedback, positive reinforcement, and video modeling. In a sequential design, the average sprint time of both athletes was lower during intervention conditions compared with baseline. Following intervention, they ran faster than their baseline average in competition at a regional Special Olympics event. We discuss intervention and research issues in behavioral coaching of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder that causes general cognitive and developmental delays. Compared to persons with Down syndrome (DS) at the same developmental level, individuals with WS generally exhibit superior expressive language abilities, but have difficultly with tasks that require the visual control of movement. Recently it has been suggested that this latter problem reflects a deficit in dorsal stream function. In the present study, this hypothesis was investigated by examining the kinematics of rapid aiming movements. The performance of the participants with WS (n = 4) was compared to the performance of participants with DS (n = 8), with undifferentiated developmental delays (n = 8), and from the general population (n = 8). In partial support of the dorsal deficit hypothesis, the results suggest that, compared to people from the other groups, the participants with WS had difficulty in preparing their movements on the basis of the visual and other information available to them. This was particularly evident in their inability to properly scale movement velocities to the amplitude of the movements and in the number of discrete corrections made during movement execution.

The end-state comfort (ESC) effect signifies the tendency to avoid uncomfortable postures at the end of goal-directed movements and can be reliably observed during object manipulation in adults, but only little is known about its development in children. The aim of the present paper is to provide a review of research on the ESC effect in normally developing children and in children with various developmental disorders, and to identify the factors constraining anticipatory planning skills. Three databases (Medline, Scopus, and PubMed) and relevant journals were scrutinized and a step-wise analysis procedure was employed to identify the relevant studies. Thirteen studies assessed the ESC effect in children, ranging from 1.5–14 years of age. Nine out of these thirteen studies reported the ESC effect to be present in normally developing children, but the results are inconsistent with regard to children’s age and the kind of ESC task used. Some evidence even suggests that these planning skills are intact in children with developmental disorders. Inconsistencies between findings are discussed in the light of moderating factors like the number of action steps, precision requirements, familiarity with the task, the task procedure, motivation, sample size, and age, as well as the cognitive and motor development of the participants. Further research is needed to investigate the onset and the developmental course of ESC planning, as well as the interdependencies with other cognitive abilities and sensory-motor skills.

The purpose of this article is to present practitioners and applied researchers with specific details of a developmental sport psychology program and coaching intervention at a professional football (soccer) academy in Great Britain. Based on a positive youth development agenda, initial consulting work with players and parents focused on education and monitoring of the 5Cs of football: Commitment, communication, concentration, control, and confidence. This was subsequently followed up with an educational and behavioral coaching intervention related to integrating the 5Cs in training and practice situations. The 4-month program aimed to specifically enhance a coach’s efficacy in shaping positive psychological and interpersonal skills in young players ranging in age from 9 to 14 years. Six coaches responsible for the development of 95 young players were involved in the program. The results of the intervention are presented for each individual coach and supplemented by interview data. Insights are provided into the role, value, and methodology behind applying sport psychology in youth-sport settings.

This study was designed to examine Ihe developmental differences in the speed and smoothness of arm movement during overarm throwing. The second purpose of this investigation was to evaluate whether jerk is a useful measure in understanding children's overarm throwing. Fifty-one girls, aged 3 to 6 years, voluntarily participated in the study. Each subject threw tennis balls as hard as she could toward a large target on the wall. A 2-camera video system was used to obtain 3-D coordinates of the hand and ball using the DLT algorithm. The variables of velocity and jerk (for the hand and ball) served as the movement outcome measures. The age-associated differences in velocity and normalized jerk (absolute jerk standardized relative to movement time and distance) were examined by ANOVAs. The results supported the hypothesis that the older subjects demonstrated faster and smoother hand movements than their younger counterparts during the forward acceleration phase (from the beginning of forward motion to ball release). In addition, the correlation results indicated thai increased hand movement speed was associated with decreased movement jerk in older subjects, whereas increased hand speed was associated with increased jerk in younger subjects. The findings suggest that examining the jerk parameter (normalized or absolute jerk) is a useful and alternative approach to capture the variance of hand movement execution for children's overarm throwing.

The purpose of this experiment was to design a gross-motor task that would quantify the perceptual sensitivity of developmentally disabled (DD) and nonhandicapped (NH) children to the relationship between their personal constraints and the constraints in the environment in a movement context. Three groups of subjects participated in this experiment: 17 DD preschoolers, 25 NH kindergarteners, and 27 NH fourth-graders. The subjects moved through a sequence of four high-jump barriers six times as quickly as possible, negotiating the barriers any way they wanted. They also went through the course without the barriers as quickly as possible to establish a baseline movement time. Relative to their own baseline, the fourth-graders moved through the obstacle course significantly faster than the kindergarteners, while the kindergarteners went through the course significantly faster than the DD preschoolers. In addition, significant differences were found between the NH kindergarteners and DD preschoolers for two sets of perceptual variables: percent error and the slopes of two identified transitions from one mode of locomotion to another. These results and further analyses showed that at least some of the movement problems experienced by DD children can be attributed to perceptual difficulties, and established the potential of the present methodology in examining perceptual sensitivity in a movement context in DD and NH children.

The patellar tendon reflex (PTR) and simple visual reaction time (VRT) were fractionated and compared in 40 subjects with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and normal coordination (NC) in two age groups. Four equal groups of subjects, 6 years DCD (6DCD), 6 years NC (6NC), 9 years DCD (9DCD), and 9 years NC (9NC) were compared using ANOVA for the main effects of coordination and age. PTR and its components of reflex latency and motor time were not significantly affected by the level of coordination; however, a significant coordination by age interaction (p < .05) revealed an increased motor time in the 6DCD group. VRT, premotor time, and motor time were all significantly (p < .05) increased in children with DCD; the increased VRT and premotor time support earlier findings, whereas the increased motor time has not previously been found. These findings suggest that the processing of reflexive and volitional responses by children with DCD differs from that of their NC peers.