Graphonomics and its contribution to the field of motor behavior: A position statement

Fine motor skills and motor control networking in developmental age

Objectives

We investigated the relationships between fine motor skills, fitness, anthropometrics, gender and perceived motor performance in school beginners. The aim of our study was to delineate whether and to what extent fine motor control would show meaningful synchrony with other motor variables in the age of onset of handwriting in school.

Methods

A sample of N = 239 of 6‐to‐8‐year‐old children were tested with an array of tasks measuring fine motor (i.e., dexterity and speed) and grapho‐motor performance (tracing on a tablet screen), anthropometric indexes, and fitness (shuttle run) measures. A subset of 95 children was also tested for perceived motor competence.

Results

In spite of an overall poor anthropometric condition, our participants were relatively fit. As expected, older children performed better in both, fine motor tasks and the shuttle test. The girls were better in fine motor skills, and an original speed‐quality trade‐off in the drawing was found. However, the magnitude of difference by grade was greater for boys' fine motor skills than those of girls'. A network analysis revealed three specific clusters, (1) perceived competencies, (2) fitness, and (3) fine motor skills.

Conclusions

Given the relative independence of these areas of physical performance, we suggest focusing on these three clusters as distinct areas of physical education. Fine motor skills deserve further consideration, especially at an early school age. We have demonstrated that network analysis and technology devices used to evaluate motor development are useful and meaningful tools.

Cultural entrainment of motor skill development: Learning to write hiragana in Japanese primary school

The aim of the present study was to examine how the social norms shared in a classroom environment influence the development of movement dynamics of handwriting of children who participate in the environment. To look into this issue, the following aspects of the entire period of classroom learning of hiragana letters in Japanese 1st graders who had just entered primary school were studied: First, the structure of classroom events and the specific types of interaction and learning within such environment were described. Second, in the experiment involving 6-year-old children who participated in the class, writing movements of children and their changes over the period of hiragana education were analyzed for each stroke composing letters. It was found that writing movement of children became differentiated in a manner specific to the different types of stroke endings, to which children were systematically encouraged to attend in the classroom. The results provide a detailed description of the process of how dynamics of fine motor movement of children is modulated by the social norms of a populated, classroom environment in a non-Latin alphabet writing system.