Relation Between Cognitive and Motor Performance in 5‐ to 6‐Year‐Old Children: Results From a Large‐Scale Cross‐Sectional Study

Abstract

The relation between cognitive and motor performance was studied in a sample of 378 children aged 5-6. Half of these children had no behavior problems; the others were selected for externalizing (38%) or internalizing problems (12%). Quantitative and qualitative aspects of motor performance were related to several aspects of cognition, after controlling for the influence of attention. No relation between global aspects of cognitive and motor performance was found. Specific positive relations were found between both aspects of motor performance, visual motor integration and working memory, and between quantitative aspects of motor performance and fluency. These findings reveal interesting parallels between normal cognitive and motor development in 5- to 6-year-old children that cannot be ascribed to attention processes.

Deficits in fine motor skills and their influence on persistence among gifted elementary school pupils

“…Among these are holding and guiding writing instruments and paintbrushes, using rulers and scissors, turning the pages of a book and placing the pieces of a puzzle together properly (Cantell et al, 1994;Losse et al, 1991). Also, correlations have been confirmed to exist between fine motor skills and specific cognitive abilities such as optical differentiation, reaction speed (Voelcker-Rehage, 2005), and intelligence (Wassenberg et al, 2005). These in turn influence learning and achievement behaviour.…”

Correlation between Cognitive Functions and Motor Coordination in Children with Different Cognitive Levels

“…Indeed, the formal operational group showed higher correlation than the others because the inhibitory ability improves during the concrete operational stage but reaches the stabilization during the formal stage (Diamond, 2013). Conversely, cognitive inertia, a typical feature of mental retardation, is responsible for hasty performance that leads to imprecision and a high amount of errors during actions (Ellis & Dulaney, 1991): particularly in balancing ability (Rigoli et al, 2012;Wassenberg et al, 2005).…”

“…The combination between cognitive and motor tasks is arousing interest as it seems to have influences on specific brain areas (cerebellum, pre-frontal cortex, basal ganglia; Wassenberg et al, 2005;Piek et al, 2004) such as the hippocampus and is supposed to produce a neurogenic reserve that could be of advantage for future life requirements (Kempermann, 2008).…”

“…Although the relation between MSC and academic achievements (Hillman et al, 2009;Hillman et al, 2011;van der Fels et al, 2015) such as the relationship between motor coordination and EF (Piek et al, 2004;Wassenberg et al, 2005) had been studied, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have investigated the relationship between MSC and EF taking into account the development stages proposed by Piaget. Indeed, it is opinion of the authors that a general partition of development stages, largely recognized (as recently reviewed Kushner et al, 2015), represent a very practical tools to define children in real situations (not in lab environment or in clinical assessment) such as the school context.…”

“…Thus, we can state that the development of the central nervous system affects motor tasks that, as an iterative process, is expression of cognitive function (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969) and metacognition (Dewey et al, 2002;Flavell, 1979). Consequently, the presence of cognitive deficits could have negative effects on motor skills outcomes (as found by Hartman et al, 2010 in children aged between 6 -12 years) and strong differences from healthy peers about cerebellum and pre-frontal cortex functions (Piek et al, 2004;Wassenberg et al, 2005).…”