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The performance of various fundamental movement skills is important for children with movement difficulties (MD) to be successful in physical education and play. The current study aimed to provide a detailed understanding of the aspects impaired in the performance of static and dynamic locomotor and object control skills among children with MD, identified with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children, relative to their same-aged peers without MD. Children, 7–10 years, were recruited from three elementary schools. Eighteen children with MD (mean age = 9.14 years, SD = 0.97) and 18 without MD (mean age = 9.12 years, SD = 0.97) participated in the study. Quantitative and qualitative aspects of their movement performance were assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development (TGMD-2) and PE Metrics. Children with MD demonstrated significantly poorer performance than children without MD for locomotor skills on the PE Metrics and object control skills on both the TGMD-2 and PE Metrics. The findings of this study suggest that children with MD primarily demonstrate immature movement patterns, inefficient movement strategies, and impaired aspects of movement that impact their performance for dynamic object control skills.

The development of motor skill proficiency during childhood is cumulative and influenced by physical growth and maturation, genetic potential, affordances in the physical and social environment, and the interactions between these factors. Therefore, typically during childhood, the trajectory of change in motor proficiency is positive. To lend developmental validity to the revision of the Test of Gross Motor Development—3rd edition (TGMD-3), this longitudinal study examined whether the skills and subtests of the TGMD-3 changed as might be expected from grade 3 to grade 4 among 277 children. The findings of this study lend support to the developmental validity of the TGMD-3 in that (1) there was within-individual change in the expected direction for both locomotor and ball skills, (2) consistent with the majority of research, boys had significantly higher ball skills scores than girls in both grade 3 and grade 4, and (3) the mean percent of maximum possible scores were in the range of approximately 60–75, which demonstrates that the majority of 8- and 9-year-old children had not reached a ceiling on this test.

The current study evaluated the developmental characteristics of printed and cursive letter writing in early school-age children. We predicted fewer age-related changes on spatial and temporal measures in cursive letter writing due to lower explicit timing demands compared with printed letter writing. Thirty children wrote the letters e and l in cursive and printed forms repetitively. For printed letters, significant age effects were seen in temporal consistency, whereas cursive letters showed age-related improvement in spatial consistency. Children tended to have higher consistency for printed handwriting than they did for cursive writing. Because of an overall advantage for printed handwriting, the explicit timing hypothesis was not fully supported. We argue that experiential factors influence the development of handwriting.

Handwriting is a core deficit in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Fifty children were tested with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition; Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Short Form; Evaluation Tool of Children's Handwriting (ETCH); McMaster Handwriting Assessment Protocol; and Beery-Buktenica Test of Visual–Motor Integration (Beery–VMI–6). The results showed significant differences in components of the ETCH between groups (p < .05) and significant relationships between handwriting (ETCH and Beery–VMI–6) and motor ability measures (r > .30). We conclude that the ETCH and the Beery–VMI–6 are sensitive measures of handwriting ability for children with probable DCD, but more research is needed to identify a gold-standard assessment for evaluating handwriting in this population.

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.

Posture becomes integrated with other goal-directed behaviors early in infancy and continues to develop into the second decade of life. However, the developmental time course over which posture is stabilized relative to the base of support during a dynamic manual precision task has not been examined. Postural-manual integration was assessed in 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults using a postural-manual task in which task precision (target fitting size) and postural difficulty (reaching distance to a target) were manipulated. The main dependent variable was postural time-to-contact (TtC). Results indicated systematic age effects in which TtC was shortest in the 7-year-olds, increased in the 10-year-olds, and was longest in the adults. Across all age levels, TtC was longer when performing a precision ft compared with a nonprecision ft and when fitting at a near target compared with fitting at a far target. Finally, TtC increased over the course of the manual fitting task, suggesting that posture became increasingly stable as the hand approached the opening. The ability to modulate postural TtC during the course of the fitting trial was most pronounced in adults as compared with both groups of children. These results suggest that even by 10-years of age, children are not yet able to fully integrate postural movements with goal directed manual tasks at adult-like levels.