Perceptual and Motor Skills最新文献

We compared children with hemiplegic and diplegic cerebral palsy (CP) using the conceptual framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Child and Youth version (ICF-CY). We enrolled 42 children with CP aged 5 - 13 years old (M age = 9.57, SD = 2.8 years). We assessed their trunk control and dynamic balance with the Trunk Control Measurement Scale (TCMS) and the Timed Up and Go test (TUG), and we used ABILHAND-Kids and Assessment of Life Habits (Life-H) to assess their manual ability and participation with activities of daily living. We administered the European Child Environment Questionnaire (ECEQ) to identify relevant environmental factors. We employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to identify specific factors contributing to potential differences between these CP groups. Children with hemiplegic CP demonstrated significantly better outcomes in terms of trunk control, dynamic balance, and environmental factors compared to those with diplegic CP (p < .05). In contrast, children with diplegic CP demonstrated superior outcomes regarding manual ability, compared to those with hemiplegic CP (p < .001). In our structural equation models, trunk control strongly predicted both dynamic balance (0.75) and environmental factors (0.74). Moreover, the relationships between trunk control and participation in daily and social activities were 0.54 and 0.47, respectively. Impaired trunk control and dynamic balance were significant contributors to increased activity restrictions and environmental barriers in children with diplegic CP. This suggests that improving disability and functioning in children with diplegic CP requires a focus on trunk control training and dynamic balance exercises.

Our primary purpose in this study was to determine whether trained dancers differed from untrained non-dancers in their ability to accurately control motor timing during finger and heel tapping tasks, both with and without slow isochronous auditory stimuli. Dancers and non-dancers were instructed to synchronize their taps with isochronous auditory stimuli under three conditions: 30, 40, and 50 BPM. After the synchronization phase, participants were asked to continue tapping without the auditory sequences. On the synchronization task, the tapping onset of both groups lagged behind the stimulus onset in all tempo conditions. In all conditions, dancers showed more accurate and stable beat synchronization and continuation than non-dancers. As the tempo condition slowed down (from 50 to 30 BPM), synchronization accuracy decreased while synchronization and continuation variability increased. Unlike for novices, dancers showed no difference between the finger and heel tapping synchronization tasks. During the continuous tasks, their timing accuracy was higher for heel than for finger tapping. Collectively, these findings suggest that dance training, which involves synchronizing bodily movements based on rhythm, may lead to an accumulation of experience that enhances specific sensorimotor skills related to synchronizing movements with external stimuli or continuing rhythmic movements temporally.

We conducted two studies to evaluate the construct validity, short term test-retest reliability, and sensitivity to mental fatigue of the Stroop task when used with older adults. In Study 1, 40 participants visited our lab on two separate days. On the first visit, they took five screening scales, and we measured their height and body mass. On the second visit, they completed the Stroop task twice with a 30-minute interval between assessments. In Study 2, 15 different participants took a 30-minute Flanker/Reverse Flanker task during the interval between the two administrations of the Stroop tasks and they gave subjective ratings of their mental fatigue on the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) prior to taking either of the Stroop tasks. In Study 1, participants showed a ceiling effect on the Stroop accuracy measure, there was strong concurrent validity for the Stroop with significant score differences between the Stroop's congruent and incongruent conditions (p < .001), and there was excellent response time reliability (ICC = 0.926) on day two when participants took the Stroop twice within a 30-minute inter-test interval. However, there were significant test-retest performance differences with respect to cognitive inhibition (p < .001). In Study 2, mental fatigue from the Flanker/Reverse Flanker test resulted in a significantly worse second Stroop performance (p = .045). We concluded that the Stroop task demonstrated strong concurrent validity and response time reliability among older adults, but it showed sensitivity to mental fatigue, and repeated administrations within the short 30-minute test-retest interval revealed that the most important Stroop measure (cognitive inhibition) was unreliable. We discuss the implications of these findings.

Reacting and responding to an external stimulus is an important component of human performance, and they inform us about a participant's neurophysiological capabilities. Our purpose in this study was to determine whether reaction times (REACT), response times (RT), and countermovement jump (CMJ) performance differ when responding to an auditory (AUD) versus visual (VIS) stimulus. Participants were 17 college-aged volunteers (6 females and 11 males; M age = 23.0, SD = 3.4 years; M height = 174.57, SD = 10.37 cm; M body mass = 73.37, SD = 13.48 kg). Participants performed CMJs on force plates immediately upon receiving an AUD or a VIS stimulus. The AUD stimulus was a beep noise, while the VIS stimulus was a light on a screen in front of the participants. We determined REACT for the tibialis anterior (TA), medial gastrocnemius (GM), vastus lateralis (VL), and biceps femoris (BF) muscles to be the amount of time between stimulus onset and the initiation of the muscle's electromyographic (EMG) signal. We determined RT to be the amount of time between stimulus onset and the beginning of the participant's force production. We assessed CMJ performance via ground reaction forces during the unweighting, braking, and propulsive phases of the jump. We quantified EMG amplitude and frequency during each CMJ phase. We found RT to be faster to the AUD versus the VIS stimulus (p = .007). VL and BF muscles had faster REACT than TA and GM muscles (p ≤ .007). The AUD stimulus was associated with faster CMJ unweighting phase metrics (p ≤ .005). Thus, individuals may react and respond faster to an AUD versus VIS stimulus, with limited improvements in their subsequent physical performance.

The Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ) has been used often to assess physical activity (PA) patterns. However, the European Portuguese version of this instrument has not been validated. We aimed to validate the self-administered GPAQ, version 2, (GPAQv2) for Portuguese adults. We included 32 participants in a pilot study of a Portuguese adaptation of the test and 108 participants in an assessment of their PA patterns and sedentary behavior (SB) through the GPAQv2. For its validation, we compared the GPAQv2 to the International PA Questionnaire-Long Form (IPAQ-LF) (concurrent validity) and the ActiGraph wGT3X-BT accelerometer (criterion validity). We evaluated PA and SB at baseline and after seven consecutive days. Test-retest reliability with the Kappa test (k) and the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) ranged from strong to almost perfect (k: 0.864-0.976) and from moderate to excellent (ICC: 0.56-0.994), respectively. Concurrent validity, assessed by Spearman's Correlation Coefficient, was moderate to substantial (rho: 0.471-0.680), and there was fair to substantial criterion validity (rho: 0.226-0.672). Bland-Altman plots showed that the GPAQv2 overestimated vigorous and moderate to vigorous PA and underestimated moderate PA. The largest difference values were related to SB, since the GPAQv2 underestimated sitting time. In sum, we found the GPAQv2 to have acceptable validity and reliability for assessing PA and SB patterns, and we recommend its use for Portuguese adults.

We assessed the effect of a one-week mindfulness-based intervention on resilience, social behavior, and motor skills in four to five-year-old children. In this randomized controlled trial, 45 children (22 females; 23 males; M age = 4.5, SD = 0.4 years) from the same preschool were randomly assigned to three groups: (a) a mindfulness group (MG; n = 15) that participated in five 30-min mindfulness sessions; (b) a physical activity group (PAG; n = 15) that engaged in five 45-min physical exercise sessions; and a control group (CG; n = 15) that received no intervention. Training sessions were held on five consecutive days. Prior to (T0) and after the five mindfulness sessions (T1), all participants blindly completed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (to assess their motor skills), the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (to evaluate their behavior), and the Child and Youth Resilience Measure-28 (to measure their resilience). At baseline (T0), there were no significant differences between the groups. The mindfulness group experienced the strongest positive effects after the intervention (T1), with improvements in both motor skills and social behavior, though there was no significant effect on resilience. Our results suggest that a brief mindfulness training intervention is a promising strategy for improving motor skills and social behavior in early childhood settings.

The ORTO-15 is a commonly used screening instrument for symptoms of Orthorexia Nervosa (ON), an obsessive overconcern with healthy eating. However, its limitations have been evidenced in several published factorial models. We analyzed the psychometric properties of seven different ORTO-15 factorial models using data from Brazilian adult participants (n = 1455; 71.4% women; M age = 29.5, SD = 8.9 years) from the country's five macro-regions who answered online questions for sample characterization and completed the Portuguese version of the ORTO-15 containing 15 items. We tested the fit of each model separately, analyzing data for men and women with separate confirmatory factor analysis, and using the Weighted Least Squares Mean and Variance Adjusted estimation method and goodness-of-fit indices. We also calculated the average variance extracted and the alpha ordinal and omega coefficients to analyze the convergent validity and reliability of the factors. None of the models tested presented adequate properties of validity and reliability. Although we found some acceptable reliability coefficients, they do not guarantee the validity of the data. Future investigators should be cautious when choosing the ORTO-15 for ON screening.

We investigated whether allowing individuals to exchange verbal information during dyadic practice changed the effect of analogy instructions intended to strengthen explicit motor learning by an implicit means. Forty-three right-handed college students performed golf putting, aiming at a target three meters away. Participants were assigned to one of two groups: Dyadic Practice Analogy Instruction or Individual Practice Analogy Instruction. Participants in the Dyadic Practice group were allowed to communicate with one another about the task during their practice. Before practice, participants performed a working memory capacity test. Both groups performed 180 trials of golf distributed across three days. On each day, there were four blocks of 15 trials. On the third day, participants reported the explicit rules they used to learn the task and they completed the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. On the fourth day, they took three learning tests: retention, dual-task transfer, and social pressure transfer tests. Results of the retention test indicated that both groups learned the task comparably. Similarly, there were no significant group differences between the participants' number of explicit rules learned and their motivation levels on either of the transfer tests. Finally, only the participants in the Dyadic Practice Analogy Group showed a significant correlation between their performance on the dual-task transfer test and their working memory capacity. Overall, we found that dyadic practice did not interfere with the implicit type of motor learning promoted by analogy instruction (i.e., implicit learning).

Coaches often use pointing gestures alongside their speech to reinforce their message and emphasize important concepts during instructional communications, but the impact of simultaneous pointing gestures and speech on learners' recall remains unclear. We used eye-tracking and recalled performance to investigate the impact of a coach's variously timed pointing gestures and speech on two groups of learners' (novices and experts) visual attention and recall of tactical instructions. Participants were 96 basketball players (48 novice and 48 expert) who attempted to recall instructions about the evolution of a basketball game system under two teaching conditions: speech accompanied by gestures and speech followed by gestures. Overall, the results showed that novice players benefited more from instructional speech accompanied by gestures than from speech followed by gestures alone. This was evidenced by their greater visual attention to the diagrams, demonstrated through a higher fixation count and decreased saccadic shifts between the coach and the diagrams. Additionally, they exhibited improved recall and experienced reduced mental effort, despite having the same fixation time on the diagrams and equivalent recall time. Conversely, experts benefited more from instructional speech followed by gestures, indicating an expertise reversal effect. These results suggest that coaches and educators may improve their tactical instructions by timing the pairing of their hand gestures and speech in relation to the learner's level of expertise.

In the current study we aimed to investigate the effect of specific dual task training (SDTT) compared to conventional soccer training (CST) on motor and cognitive performances in U13 elite soccer players. Twenty-four young soccer players (all males) participated in this study. We measured their change of direction ability (CODA) and cognitive performances (cognitive flexibility and inhibition) before and after four weeks in either the SDTT group or the CST group. We administered the Trail-Making Test (TMT) to evaluate cognitive flexibility and the Stroop test to evaluate cognitive inhibition. We assessed CODA using the t test (TT). After training, CODA (p < .001), cognitive flexibility (p < .001), and inhibition (p < .001) were improved only in the SDTT group. These results suggest that SDTT seems more suitable than CST to optimally improve both CODA and cognitive performances in U13 elite soccer players.