Manual Control Age and Sex Differences in 4 to 11 Year Old Children

Abstract

To what degree does being male or female influence the development of manual skills in pre-pubescent children? This question is important because of the emphasis placed on developing important new manual skills during this period of a child's education (e.g. writing, drawing, using computers). We investigated age and sex-differences in the ability of 422 children to control a handheld stylus. A task battery deployed using tablet PC technology presented interactive visual targets on a computer screen whilst simultaneously recording participant's objective kinematic responses, via their interactions with the on-screen stimuli using the handheld stylus. The battery required children use the stylus to: (i) make a series of aiming movements, (ii) trace a series of abstract shapes and (iii) track a moving object. The tasks were not familiar to the children, allowing measurement of a general ability that might be meaningfully labelled ‘manual control’, whilst minimising culturally determined differences in experience (as much as possible). A reliable interaction between sex and age was found on the aiming task, with girls' movement times being faster than boys in younger age groups (e.g. 4–5 years) but with this pattern reversing in older children (10–11 years). The improved performance in older boys on the aiming task is consistent with prior evidence of a male advantage for gross-motor aiming tasks, which begins to emerge during adolescence. A small but reliable sex difference was found in tracing skill, with girls showing a slightly higher level of performance than boys irrespective of age. There were no reliable sex differences between boys and girls on the tracking task. Overall, the findings suggest that prepubescent girls are more likely to have superior manual control abilities for performing novel tasks. However, these small population differences do not suggest that the sexes require different educational support whilst developing their manual skills.

Fundamental motor skills of Czech children at the end of the preschool period

“…However, for the individual MD test items, it was found that boys outperformed girls on the MD1 item, whereas girls outperformed boys on the MD2 item. Since better manual skills have been more often mentioned for girls (Flatters et al, 2014;Livesey et al, 2007;Sigmundsson & Rostoft, 2003), it is surprising that better performance has not been confirmed for girls in test items MD1 and MD3. Generally, higher manual skills performance in girls has often been attributed to the early interest of girls in activities including fine motor skills (e.g.…”

“…Conversely, girls' locomotor proficiency has more often been reported as higher than boys (Barnett, Morgan, van Beurden, & Beard, 2008;Hardy et al, 2009;van Beurden, Zask, Barnett, & Dietrich, 2002). Most studies focused on balance or fine motor skills have found better results in girls (Flatters, Hill, Williams, Barber, & Mon-Williams, 2014;Livesey et al, 2007;Sigmundsson & Rostoft, 2003;Venetsanou & Kambas, 2011;Vlachos, Papadimitrou, & Bonoti, 2014), or have not revealed any significant gender differences (Shala, 2009;Singh et al, 2015;Van Waelvelde, Peersman, Lenoir, Smits Engelsman, & Henderson, 2008).…”

Effect of sports training programme on juvenile sports dancers motivation

“…Thus, there is a relevant scientific issue -in what way the needs of children should be considered, the diversity of methods and means should be applied and sports training programmes for juvenile dancers should be modelled in order to encourage the expression of their sport motivation. Taking into account these things, a hypothesis is raised in the work that the sports training model for junior (9)(10)(11) dancers that is based on the athlete's management theory accentuating the significance of the feedback strengthens the sport motivation [15,16].…”

“…Analysing scientific references, we missed the rules of the effect of dancers' training means (contents of practice) on the sports preparedness of juvenile dancers. The researchers state that children are very active in the period of the middle childhood (9)(10)(11) and they participate willingly in such sports activities as games and relay races [7][8][9]. The researchers of dances [10][11][12] state that different dance styles with the most various moves should be applied in the initial stage of training of juvenile dancers.…”

Sex Differences of Spectral Characteristics of Baseline EEG in Primary School-Aged Children

“…Так, в первые годы жизни девочки успешнее овладевают мелкой мото-рикой рук [17], превосходят мальчиков по вербальным способностям [18−20]. Они не отличаются от мальчиков по скорости овладения речью, но начинают раньше гово-рить, при этом их речь более правильная и сложная [21].…”