Duration: 2021 – 2023
Principal Researcher
Carlos Luz
Research line:
Health Education and Quality of Life
Motor competence (MC) is a crucial variable for the development of human movement, physical activity, sports participation and an active lifestyle, acting directly on health-related physical fitness and motor literacy (Stodden et al. al., 2008). MC refers to the quality of human movement performance and is defined as a person's ability to be proficient in a wide range of locomotor, stability, and manipulative motor skills (Utesch & Bardid, 2019). Motor Coordination Disorder (PCM) is considered one of the biggest health problems among school-age children worldwide (Cairney et al., 2005). Children with this diagnosis tend to be characterized as clumsy, tend to have a low level of physical activity, low fine and gross motor skills (Haga, 2008), and also have an extremely negative impact on their school and daily life. Autism spectrum conditions are neurodevelopmental conditions and their diagnosis is based on difficulties in social interaction and communication, along with the presence of restricted interests, difficulties in adapting to changes and stereotypical and repetitive behaviors (Baron-Cohen, 2008). Children with this pathology have a tendency towards high physical inactivity, as they have low levels of proficiency in fine and gross motor skills (Liu & Breslin, 2013) and social skills (Lindsay et al., 2017), leading to less playful participation. Our research team created the Motor Competence Assessment (MCA), an instrument for assessing CM, its construct validity having already been established (Luz et al. 2016) and the normative values for the Portuguese population of 3 to 23 years old (Rodrigues et al. 2019). Additionally, MCA has been used by our research team in several studies (Luz et al., 2019; Luz, Rodrigues, et al., 2017). Concurrent validation and inter-observer reliability of the MCA from 6 to 10 years of age is currently underway. The objective of this project is to verify the usefulness of the MCA to identify children with atypical motor development. Thus, we will evaluate 200 children aged 6 to 10 years old, using the MCA and movement ABC (instrument used to evaluate the PCM) and another 60 children diagnosed with autism using the MCA.