Gender differences in fundamental movement skill development in six-year-old Flemish preschool children

Onderzoeksoutput: Meeting abstract (Book)

Samenvatting

Introduction There is still no agreement on gender differences in movement skill
performance of pre-school children. Some studies report no gender differences in FMS (locomotor tasks) at the age of six (Butterfeld,2002), others only observe significant gender differences when explosive strength is the underlying ability of the task (Zurck, 2005). Methods Two hundred thirty six 6-year-old Flemish pre-school children (N=236) were individually assessed with the Motoriktest für Vier- bis
Sechsjährige Kinder (MOT 4-6). Children's performances on 17 tasks were rated on a 3-point scale (0,1,2) and generated a Total Score (TS)of 34. Descriptive analyses were used to report frequencies and percentiles of scores. Results Mean TS was 20.78 (SD= 5.7), without significant gender differences. When comparing FMS profiles of boys and girls, different trends occurred. Boys outperformed girls in the
object control skills throwing at a target (boys 68.1% and girls 35.7% score 1 or 2, U= 4218,5 p<0.01, r= 3,63) and catching a ring (boys 78.3% and girls 57.1% score 1 or 2, U= 5014,0 p<0.01, r= 3,33). In the locomotion skills 'jumping jacks' (girls 84.7% and boys 65.9% score 1 or 2, U= 4734,5 pMore subtle differences appeared for the 'jumping in a hoop and balancing on one leg' and 'side jump' for which girls performed better,and the 'transporting balls' and 'roll around the axis' in which boys had a higher proficiency. Discussion Significant gender differences in our study were in accordance with several other studies. Our results seemed to match the findings of other authors who demonstrate
girls to be typically performing more successfully in balancing (Sigmundsen, 2003) and jumping tasks (except the height jump) and boys outshining in running and catching tasks (Hardy, 2009). References Butterfeld, S.A., Lehnhard, R.A., Coladarci, T. (2002). Age, sex and body mass index in performance of selected locomotor and fitness tasks by children in grades K-2. Perceptual Motor Skills, 94 (1): 80 - 86
Hardy, L.L., King, L., Farell, L., Macniven, R., Howlett, S. (2009). Fundamental movement skills among Australian preschool children, Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, (in press) Sigmundsson, H., Rostoft, M.S. (2003). Motor Development: exploring the motor competence of 4-year-old Norwegian children, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 47 (4): 451-459 Zurc, J., Pisot, R., Strojnik, V.(2005). Gender differences in motor performance in 6.5-year-old children, Kinesiologia Slovenica, 11 (1): 90-104
Originele taal-2English
TitelBook of Abstracts of the 16th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science
RedacteurenN. Tim Cable, Keith Georg
UitgeverijORIEL, Liverpool
Pagina's611-611
Aantal pagina's1
ISBN van geprinte versie978-0-9568903-0-6
StatusPublished - 2011
EvenementUnknown -
Duur: 1 jan 2011 → …

Conference

ConferenceUnknown
Periode1/01/11 → …

Bibliografische nota

Cable,N. Tim; Georg, Keith

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