Scheduled for Sport Management, Special Populations, Leisure and Recreation Posters, Thursday, April 3, 2003, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM, Convention Center: Exhibit Hall A


Perceptual Motor Performances of Children With Learning and Behavioral Disorders

Jiabei Zhang, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI and Dalun Zhang, Clemson University, Clemson, SC

Perceptual motor abilities are general traits of an individual that underlie the success of a variety of movement skills. Examining perceptual motor abilities is helpful for designing movement skill training programs. The purpose of this study was to examine perceptual motor performances of children with learning and behavioral disorders. Participants were 37 children, ages from 4 to 10 years old, 23 males and 14 females, showing learning and behavioral problems since they were diagnosed as learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, mental retardation, or autism. Wood Motor Success Screening Tool was used for analyzing these children’s perceptual motor performances. The concurrent validity of this tool was checked using Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency-Short Form as the criterion measure. The test-retest reliability of this tool was investigated with the conduction of this tool twice within a week. Point scores earned from the first conduction of this tool were used to evaluate each child’s perceptual motor performances. Spearman rank order and intraclass correlation methods were employed to calculate the concurrent validity coefficient and the test-retest reliability coefficient, respectively. Overall Motor Ability Norms and Individual Area Norms of the Wood Motor Success Screening Tool were employed to determine a participant’s overall perceptual motor ability and areas of weakness. A concurrent validity coefficient of .85 and a test-retest reliability coefficient of .93 were found, indicating that Wood Motor Success Screening Tool was a valid and reliable tool for evaluating a participant’s perceptual motor performances. It was found that 68% of the participants had poor overall perceptual motor performances. In specific perceptual motor areas, 91% of the participants demonstrated the below-average balance performance, 59% the below-average eye-hand coordination and bilateral performances, 54% the below-average fine motor skill performance, and 49% the below-average body imagery performance. These results implies that perceptual motor training should be an important part of the physical education training program for children with learning and behavioral disorders due to their poor overall perceptual motor performances. It appears that perceptual motor training objectives for these children should be targeted on almost all specific perceptual motor areas due to that more than half of the participants showed the below-average performances in most specific areas. Teachers, however, may need to place more emphasis on balance and less emphasis on body image due to that there were more people with balance problem and less people with body imagery problem.

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