The trajectory of balance skill development from childhood to adolescence was influenced by birthweight: a latent transition analysis in a British birth cohort

Latent Transition Analysis of Motor Development Patterns in Preschoolers

In-group heterogeneity is often neglected during investigations of motor development patterns in children. Moreover, the variation in motor development patterns over time has seldom been examined. In this work, 1884 three-year-old preschoolers were selected from a panel study conducted in Taiwan called the National Longitudinal Study of Child Development and Care. A confirmatory factor analysis was applied to analyze the construct validity of the assessments of motor development used for these children. A latent profile analysis and latent transition analysis (LTA) were sequentially applied to clarify their motor development patterns at the ages of three and four years and their transitions between these two ages. The following findings were obtained: (1) The motor development assessment had good validity. (2) Considerable heterogeneity regarding motor development in preschoolers was observed, in which four and three subgroups displaying distinct levels of mastery with respect to their gross and fine motor skills were identified at the ages of three and four years, respectively. (3) From age three to age four, a large proportion of the preschoolers exhibited improvements or retentions in both gross and fine motor skills, whereas some of the preschoolers were classified into subgroups displaying "gross motor retention and fine motor progression," "gross motor progression and fine motor retention," "gross motor retention and fine motor regression," and "gross motor regression and fine motor progression." Few preschoolers exhibited "general motor regression." The present results suggest that there were considerable heterogeneous groups in the motor development in preschoolers in the middle of early childhood, and this phenomenon has rarely been addressed in former studies. The LTA results implied that effective interventions should be given sequentially to preschoolers in subgroups whose motor development presented regression and retention tendencies.

Effect of Exergame Intervention on Balance Ability of Adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objective: Balance is a strong indicator of physical development of adolescents, and there is a trend of employing exergame for balance training. However, the effectiveness of exergame specifically designed for balance training on adolescents' balance abilities in various postures remains unclear. Materials and Methods: In this study, an exergame for balance training was developed with Kinect and a randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess its effect on balance ability development. Thirty-two healthy adolescents (age: 11.44 ± 0.51) were recruited to participate in an 8-week trial and randomly allocated to an exergame group (N = 16) or control group (N = 16). Results: The static balance test in the eagle stance posture and the dynamic balance test using the Y-Balance Test were both conducted before and after the intervention. From the results of Mann-Whitney U test, the intervention group presented greater improvement during the eagle stance test with eyes closed than the control group with P = 0.009 and P = 0.03 in left and right leg, respectively. The intervention group also showed a more significant improvement in dynamic balance (P = 0.002), which was reflected by the higher increase of composite scores. Furthermore, the balance ability when standing with nondominant leg or eyes closed, both presented higher improvements than standing with dominant leg or eyes opened, respectively. Moreover, 75% participants reported high interest and 87.5% participants expressed high engagement with exergame (score ≥4) using 5-score scale questionnaire. Conclusion: The proposed exergame for balance training could potentially promote balance training and serve as an educational tool for healthy adolescents to enhance their balance abilities.