Towards a Better Understanding of the Motor-Cognition Link in Kindergarten Children

• In Event: 3-047 - Association Between Specific Motor Skills and Executive Functions from Infancy Through Kindergarten age

Integrative Statement

In the last decade, there is a continuous interest in better understanding the specific relation between cognitive and motor functions in childhood, from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. Previous research investigating this link in typically developing children produced inconsistent findings regarding the nature and strength of associations. Several lines of research propose the idea of specific relations between executive functions (EF) and specific motor control tasks and argue against the assumption of a global link between motor and cognitive development (Diamond, 2000). In fact, whereas the relation between EF and fine motor skills is relatively well established (Davis, Pitchford, & Limback, 2011; Wassenberg et al., 2005), the relationship between EF and gross motor skills is less clear (Livesey, Keen, Rouse, & White, 2006). The present study therefore aimed at shedding light on the motor-EF link by differentially addressing fine and gross motor coordination and their links to EF. We assume two circumstances contributing these inconsistent findings of the EF-motor link. Firstly, studies often focus on the differentiation between fine and gross motor tasks and neglect the importance of the challenges and demands inherent in any motor task. That is, automated, simple motor coordination tasks should have fewer shared processes with EF compared to novel, complex motor tasks. Secondly, because motor coordination and EF undergo a dynamic developmental progression within the age range of 4 to 8 years, these age-related variances are likely to change the correlations substantially. We therefore systematically address the effect of age on the motor-EF link. The aim of the present study was to experimentally approach the interplay between EFs and motor control in 5-to 6-year-old typically developing kindergarten children, manipulating the difficulty of the motor tasks. Specifically, we designed two versions for each of the included motor control task; an easier and a more difficult version. In a within-subject design, n=124 kindergarten children were tested on twelve motor and three EF tasks.
Results replicated the relatively well established motor-EF link. Analyses revealed stronger correlations between EF tasks and the difficult fine and gross motor tasks compared to the correlations between EF tasks and the easier fine and gross motor tasks (see Figure 1). Whereas for the easier fine motor tasks the correlation with the EF tasks still reached significance, a non-significant relationship between the easier gross motor tasks and the EF tasks was found. These findings suggest that in this age group, the major developmental gross motor milestones have already been achieved, resulting in a close to zero correlation with EF tasks. If gross motor demands are higher, as in the difficult gross motor tasks, EF are required more – leading to a stronger association between EF and gross motor tasks. Findings including and excluding age from analyses will be presented and discussed.
Our findings indicate that if motor control demands are higher, more EF are required and consequently the relationship between EF and motor control is stronger compared to tasks with lower motor demands.

Authors

• Michelle Maurer, University of Bern
  Presenting Author

• Claudia Roebers, Bern University
  Non-Presenting Author