Link Between Visual Motor, Object Manipulation Skills, Executive Function and Social Behavior

Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport published research on 92, three to five year old children to establish a link between early visual-motor integration skills and executive function and a link between early object manipulation skills and social behaviors in the classroom during the preschool years.  Each participant was evaluated for visual-motor integration skills, object manipulation skills, executive function, and social behaviors in the fall and spring of the preschool year.  The results indicated the following:

1. children who had better visual-motor integration skills in the fall had better executive function scores in the spring of the preschool year after controlling for age, gender, Head Start status, and site location, but not after controlling for children’s baseline levels of executive function.
2. children who demonstrated better object manipulation skills in the fall showed significantly stronger social behavior in their classrooms (as rated by teachers) in the spring, including more self-control, more cooperation, and less externalizing/hyperactivity after controlling for social behavior in the fall and other covariates.

The researchers concluded that children’s visual-motor integration and object manipulation skills in the fall have modest to moderate relations with executive function and social behaviors later in the preschool year.

Reference:  MacDonald, M., Lipscomb, S., McClelland, M. M., Duncan, R., Becker, D., Anderson, K., & Kile, M. (2016). Relations of Preschoolers’ Visual-Motor and Object Manipulation Skills With Executive Function and Social Behavior. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 1-12.

Teaching Catching, Throwing and Kicking Skills is loaded with information to help children learn object manipulation skills. It is in PDF format and in Word (therefore you can edit the pages).  This packet includes the age progression of each skill, visual picture cards with step by step directions, tips on teaching the skills, letter home to parents regarding teaching the skills, different ways to practice the skill and data collection to track progress. The activities are reproducible to use over and over again with all the children that you teach.  FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION.

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