Due to the lack of tools that can be easily used by practitioners, there is a need to develop acceptable embedded ways to assess children's fine motor skill development within early childhood education and care settings. This study examined the validity and reliability of a brief and ecologically valid fine motor assessment tool for preschool-aged…

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…

Although researchers have highlighted the benefits of adopting an external focus of attention for rehabilitation, studies have consistently revealed low external focus use by physiotherapists. Consequently, the purpose of this research was to explore factors influencing physiotherapists' focus of attention use and to gain insight into the…

The aim of this study was to determine the validity and reliability of the Movement Environment Rating Scale (MOVERS), using data from 13 early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Test-retest reliability was calculated using ICCs, percentage agreement and weighted Kappa. Internal consistency was examined using Cronbach's alpha. To…

New estimates indicate that many children in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of developmental delay (DD). This study aimed to assess the prevalence and socioeconomic determinants of undetected DD, and mean developmental scores (MDS) in preschool-aged children in the northwest of Iran. This study was conducted on 615 children aged…

Aim: To investigate developmental trajectories in early childhood and predictors of class assignment. Methods: Data were available for Gen2 infants at 12 (n = 2275), 24 (n = 1845) and 36 (n = 2110) months of age in the Raine Study. Latent growth class analysis was used to identify developmental trajectories based on the Ages and Stages…

Environments where children move about provide affordances that play a significant role in their development. This research presents the Affordances for Motor Behavior of Schoolchildren assessment tool, which aims to assess the interdependent systems, such as home, school, and sports activities, that can influence 6- to 10-year-old children's…

This study examined early development of cool and hot self-regulation and how they were related to Chinese preschoolers' early achievement. A total of 951 children (448 girls) aged three to five in Hong Kong participated in this study. Children's self-regulation was assessed with a battery of five tasks tapping either cool or hot self-regulation;…

This article presents data from a survey of Early Childhood Education and Care services in Australia. The study investigated outdoor play provision in terms of space, resources and planning for risk-taking in play. Overall, the results indicate that the participating centres are well-resourced to promote physical play, but vary in terms of…

Understanding the characteristics of preschool-age children is an important and first step for supporting children's healthy development and school readiness. Children may show different developmental features and come different social, socio-cultural background; however, they are in the same age. Reaching of education at a desired level will be…

This study investigated the psychometrics of a recently developed global rating measure of videotaped parent-infant interaction, the "Manchester Assessment of Caregiver-Infant Interaction" (MACI), in a normative sample. Inter-rater reliability, stability over time, and convergent and discriminant validity were tested. Six-minute play…

Children with autism spectrum disorders are at risk for motor problems. However, this area is often overlooked in the developmental evaluation in autism diagnostic clinics. An alternative can be to identify children who should receive intensive motor assessment by using a parent-based screener. The aim of this study was to examine whether the Ages…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an 8-week gymnastics curriculum on children's movement competence and their physical self-concept. There were 113 children (46% girls, 49% intervention) with a mean age of 9.4 years (SD = 1.8) that participated. Intervention children underwent 8 weeks of gymnastics and the comparison group continued with…

Fetal exposure to prenatal maternal stress can have lifelong consequences, with different types of maternal stress associated with different areas of child development. Fewer studies have focused on motor skills, even though they are strongly predictive of later development across a range of domains. Research on mechanisms of transmission has…

This study examined whether a novel parent-report questionnaire, the Autism Parent Screen for Infants, could differentiate infants subsequently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder from a high-risk cohort (siblings of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (n = 66)) from high-risk and low-risk comparison infants (no family history of…