Learning to walk leads to an increase in language abilities; however, the underlying mechanisms accounting for this relation remain unclear. Investigating the quality of early gait control may offer some insights. The purpose of this study was to: (1) quantify how 13-month-olds (n = 39; 39% male) and 24-month-olds (n = 39; 59% male) adapt gait…

Spatial play in early childhood is associated with a variety of spatial and cognitive skills. However, these associations are often derived from studies in which different tasks are used across different age ranges, leaving open the question of how children's natural behaviors during spatial play develop from infancy into the early preschool…

Introduction: The aim of this study was to determine whether individuals with congenital blindness make more recognizable drawings of known objects that are furniture sized (table, man, tree) rather than hand sized (egg, coconut, banana; Hypothesis 1). We also investigated whether knowledge that the tactile drawings had been produced by people who…

This experiment examined how multiple planning constraints affect grasp posture planning in 6- to 10-year-old children (n = 16 in each group) by manipulating the intended object end-orientation (left end-down, right end-down) and initial precision demands (standard, initial precision) of a bar transport task. Results indicated that grasp posture…

Purpose: The purpose of this article was to examine specific linkages between early visual-motor integration skills and executive function, as well as between early object manipulation skills and social behaviors in the classroom during the preschool year. Method: Ninety-two children aged 3 to 5 years old (M[subscript age] = 4.31 years) were…

Preschooler Gross Motor Quality Scale (PGMQ) was recently developed to evaluate motor skill quality of preschoolers. The purpose of this study was to establish the concurrent validity of PGMQ using Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2) as the gold standard. One hundred and thirty five preschool children aged from three to six years were…

This study was designed to examine the relationship between conceptions of ability and understandings of the meaning of effort. Participants practiced a novel task and completed an ability conceptions questionnaire prior to instruction and a meaning of effort survey after practicing the task. The majority of participants believed in the efficacy…

The present study assessed mastery behaviors in toddlers with physical impairment during object and social play interaction with their parents. Poor mastery motivation in object play of children with physical impairments has been attributed to difficulty in independently structuring tasks, limited experience in play effectiveness, and frequent…