Gross motor skills are the precursors of complex activities used for performing typical daily activities and for playing games and sports. The development of this kind of skills happens between three and eight years and an adequate level of these skills is mandatory in order to develop psyco-motor, social and affective domains of learning. In this work, the gross motor development has been studied in 120 children aged 6 to 11 from three different schools in Sicily. Every child performed all the items of the TGMD test and was ranked according to their gross motor development quotient. Later, thanks to the parents' help, every child had to complete the CLASS questionnaire which had investigated on their daily routine in terms of activities done. Regression analysis was performed to establish which determinants impact the most on the skills development. Results showed that males, the children of the lower classes and those who practice a sport are more likely to have a high motor level in comparison with the respective reference categories (i.e, females, highest school classes, and students with low level of motion, respectively). These evidences are useful to understand the role of the school in the development of FMS and to plan adequate strategies in order to overcome the up-to-date limits in the physical education teaching-learning process.

Situational analysis and decision-making represent key elements of elite sports performances, but few studies have investigated which player’s skills related to these aspects are relevant in elite handballers. The aim of this study was to address differences among handballers belonging to two tiers in processing situational probabilities information related to offensive and defensive situations. A total of 38 handballers (male = 22, female = 16, age: 25.6 ± 6.5 years, first-tier = 11, second-tier = 27) saw videos about different offensive and defensive actions. According to the temporal occlusion paradigm, each handballer provided a response about the best action a selected player had to perform according to the game’s context. The time, accuracy, and technical correctness of each player’s response were assessed. MANOVA revealed moderate-to-high skills differences between first- and second-tier players. First-tier players provided higher scores in response time and accuracy; they also obtained higher technical correctness scores in the most complex situation. The members of the first tier seemed to mainly depend on the accuracy of responses, even if the technical correctness also resulted in a predictor in the most complex situation. Playing in the best tier seems to require the development of very good skills related to processing situational probability information; therefore, training these elements seems to be necessary for determining the differences among elite handballers.

The chapter seeks to resolve two important educational issues in order to make the use of tactical knowledge assessment tools simple and intuitive: 1) How can we characterize and contextualize the definition of tactical knowledge in the learning environment? 2) What are the tools adequate to assess the students' development related to the tactical knowledge in a simple and ecological way? Replies to these questions are proposed alongside the four sections of this chapter. The first one introduces the auxology of cognitive development through Jean Piaget's theory of developmental stages. The second section focuses on cognitive learning in physical activity and sports sciences. The third section provides a definition of the proceduralization of declarative tactical knowledge (DTK) in open-skill sports. The fourth section provides the readers with some practical suggestions about the procedures for assessing students' development related to the cognitive domain and presents some tools for measuring the DTK level among students and players.

No abstract

It is widely known that in elderly people a regular physical activity of mild intensity shows significant benefits in term of health, while a sedentary lifestyle contributes, together with other factors of risks, to develop some chronic degenerative diseases, particularly cardiovascular metabolic and osteo-articular diseases. Therefore, the aim of this study is useful to assess influence of controlled training, based on conditional and coordinative motor abilities, in elderly people. The group of this study is made up of twenty members (experimental and control groups) aged from 65 to 75. The experimental groups have trained for nine months (2 times for week with 45-60' for each training session) and no training for control group. Before and after nine months of training, each participant has been assessed with the tests presented in the article. There were no significant differences for the control group in the pre and post comparison except for the Chair-Stand test characterized by a worsening of the results. On the contrary, there were statistically significant differences between the pre and post-test evaluations of the experimental group, in which improvements have been shown in the test. This investigation showed the training benefit on long period in elderly without any compromising.