Examining complexity in grip selection tasks and consequent effects on planning for end-state-comfort in children with developmental coordination disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

This is the first review to provide both a systematic and meta-analytic approach to characterizing motor planning deficits in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Task complexity appears to be a key factor affecting motor planning in children with DCD. However, the different task-related factors and how they affect motor planning ability has not been examined. By systematically reviewing ten studies examining motor planning in children aged 4- to 14 years with and without DCD using grip selection tasks, task complexity was determined according to grip choices, level of precision, number of action steps and degree of rotation. A meta-analysis (N = 607; DCD = 255) revealed that, overall, those with DCD were 6.8% less likely to plan motor actions comfortably than typically developing children. This ability was moderated by task complexity (I2 = 66.7%), with performance differences ranging from 2.33% for low (g = 0.21) to 13.77% (g = 0.79) for high complexity. The results confirmed that children with DCD are able to plan for comfortable end states for tasks with simple and medium complexity level. When task complexity increased, compared to typically developing children, the motor planning ability of those with DCD was affected to a significantly greater extent. These findings provide important implications for both behavioral and neurological interventions.

A spotlight on preschool: the influence of family factors on children's early literacy skills.

RATIONALE: Phonological awareness, letter knowledge, oral language (including sentence recall) and rapid automatised naming are acknowledged within-child predictors of literacy development. Separate research has identified family factors including socio-economic status, parents' level of education and family history. However, both approaches have left unexplained significant amounts of variance in literacy outcomes. This longitudinal study sought to improve prospective classification accuracy for young children at risk of literacy failure by adding two new family measures (parents' phonological awareness and parents' perceived self-efficacy), and then combining the within-child and family factors. METHOD: Pre-literacy skills were measured in 102 four year olds (46 girls and 56 boys) at the beginning of Preschool, and then at the beginning and end of Kindergarten, when rapid automatised naming was also measured. Family factors data were collected at the beginning of Preschool, and children's literacy outcomes were measured at the end of Year 1 (age 6-7 years). RESULTS: Children from high-risk backgrounds showed poorer literacy outcomes than low-risk students, though three family factors (school socio-economic status, parents' phonological awareness, and family history) typically accounted for less Year 1 variance than the within-child factors. Combining these family factors with the end of Kindergarten within-child factors provided the most accurate classification (i.e., sensitivity = .85; specificity = .90; overall correct = .88). IMPLICATIONS: Our approach would identify at-risk children for intervention before they began to fail. Moreover, it would be cost-effective because although few at-risk children would be missed, allocation of unnecessary educational resources would be minimised.