Identifying childhood movement profiles and comparing differences in mathematical skills between clusters: A latent profile analysis.

ABSTRACT

The aims of this study were; 1) to identify different movement profiles in sixth graders, and 2) to investigate if there are differences in their mathematical basic (BasicMath) and problem solving (ProbSol) skills between existing movement profiles. The sample included 461 (223 girls, 238 boys) students with a mean age of 11.27 ± .32 years from southern and middle Finland. A latent profile analysis (LPA) revealed four movement profiles "poor movers", "average movers", "skilled movers" and "expert movers". These profiles differed substantially in their motor competence (MC) and health-related fitness (HRF). A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) also revealed that "poor movers" and "average movers" obtained lower results in BasicMath comparing with "skilled movers". The results of this study suggest that cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, MC and BasicMath are interrelated.