Relations between playing activities and fine motor development

Counting on fine motor skills: links between preschool finger dexterity and numerical skills

“…The Home Fine Motor Environment scale of the questionnaire consisted of 10 questions and was adapted from Suggate et al. (). Parents had to estimate how frequently (on a 5‐point Likert scale with the options “never”, “seldom”, “sometimes”, “often”, “very often”) their child performed certain fine motor activities, such as cutting with scissors, playing with small toys, or threading beads.…”

“…For example, certain tasks such as fine motor writing are likely confounded with previous educational experience. This includes their home learning environment, where both writing and mathematical skills can be informally taught or emphasized (Suggate, Stoeger, & Pufke, 2017).…”

“…Importantly, we also account for general cognitive skills, maturation and home mathematics and fine motor environment to rule out alternative explanations for the pattern of our results. This is important due to findings reporting associations between general cognitive skills and both FMS and mathematical skills (Passolunghi, Mammarella, & Altoè, ; Roebers et al., ), as well as influences of the home learning environment on both FMS and mathematical development (Benavides‐Varela et al., ; Suggate et al., ).…”

Do fine motor skills contribute to early reading development?

“…According to this idea, both cognitive skills and FMS undergo sharp development in early childhood, which may give rise to spurious behavioural links that are in reality driven by maturation (Martzog, 2015). This idea is supported through the large predictive role that chronological age plays in both FMS and cognitive skillshowever, links still exist above and beyond age (e.g., Martzog, 2015;Suggate & Stoeger, 2014). Other theories have focused on neural substrates, pointing out the proximity of motor and speech areas or the joint involvement of regions in both FMS and cognitive skills (Diamond, 2000;James & Gauthier, 2006).…”

“…Cohn, & Henderson, 2003) and cultural differences (Luo et al, 2007), whereby particular familial or cultural settings provide generally more stimulating environments that foster both FMS and cognitive or academic skills. A fourth line of work that has emerged in recent years points to the grounded nature of cognition (Glenberg & Gallese, 2011;Thelen, 2000) and speculates that representations anchored in sensory experience, and hence motor skill, enjoy processing advantages (Siakaluk, Pexman, Aguilera, Owen, & Sears, 2006;Suggate, Pufke, & Stoeger, 2016a;Suggate & Stoeger, 2014).…”