The relation between cognitive and motor performance and their relevance for children's transition to school: a latent variable approach.

Both theoretically and empirically there is a continuous interest in understanding the specific relation between cognitive and motor development in childhood. In the present longitudinal study including three measurement points, this relation was targeted. At the beginning of the study, the participating children were 5-6-year-olds. By assessing participants' fine motor skills, their executive functioning, and their non-verbal intelligence, their cross-sectional and cross-lagged interrelations were examined. Additionally, performance in these three areas was used to predict early school achievement (in terms of mathematics, reading, and spelling) at the end of participants' first grade. Correlational analyses and structural equation modeling revealed that fine motor skills, non-verbal intelligence and executive functioning were significantly interrelated. Both fine motor skills and intelligence had significant links to later school achievement. However, when executive functioning was additionally included into the prediction of early academic achievement, fine motor skills and non-verbal intelligence were no longer significantly associated with later school performance suggesting that executive functioning plays an important role for the motor-cognitive performance link.

How do different aspects of self-regulation predict successful adaptation to school?

Self-regulation plays an important role in successful adaptation to preschool and school contexts as well as in later academic achievement. The current study relates different aspects of self-regulation such as temperamental effortful control and executive functions (updating, inhibition, and shifting) to different aspects of adaptation to school such as learning-related behavior, school grades, and performance in standardized achievement tests. The relationship between executive functions/effortful control and academic achievement has been established in previous studies; however, little is known about their unique contributions to different aspects of adaptation to school and the interplay of these factors in young school children. Results of a 1-year longitudinal study (N=459) revealed that unique contributions of effortful control (parental report) to school grades were fully mediated by children's learning-related behavior. On the other hand, the unique contributions of executive functions (performance on tasks) to school grades were only partially mediated by children's learning-related behavior. Moreover, executive functions predicted performance in standardized achievement tests exclusively, with comparable predictive power for mathematical and reading/writing skills. Controlling for fluid intelligence did not change the pattern of prediction substantially, and fluid intelligence did not explain any variance above that of the two included aspects of self-regulation. Although effortful control and executive functions were not significantly related to each other, both aspects of self-regulation were shown to be important for fostering early learning and good classroom adjustment in children around transition to school.

[Development and evaluation of a motor coordination training for children in special-needs classes]. / Entwicklung und Evaluation eines Programms zur koordinativen Förderung von Kindern in Einschulungsklassen.

Previous research showed that children in classes with reduced curriculum ("ready for school classes") perform systematically poorer in short-term memory, attention control and motor coordination skills than children in regular classes. Based on these results, a training to improve children's planning, sequencing, and executive control of motor actions was developed. It includes body coordination, (bi-) manual coordination, rhythm and balance. The tasks stress flexibility of action, interference control and focused attention. Training sessions proceed from easy to complex, from action accuracy to speed, and from teacher guidance to children's self monitoring. Over the course of 3 weeks, 53 children were trained daily for 20 mins. In pre- and posttests, motor coordination was assessed with the M-ABC; focused attention, short-term memory performance, and self-concept was tested with paper-pencil and computerized tasks. Half of the children were trained between pre- and posttest, the other half received the training after posttest. Results revealed no global training effects; however, children in the training condition caught up during training in specific cognitive and motor tasks, and trained children showed a more optimistic self-concept. Training effects were pronounced for children with balance problems. The findings are discussed in terms of reasons for the weak training effects, and potential improvements of the training.