L. (Leila) Faber

Uniek in je Motoriek: Research on the quantitative and qualitative development of fine motor skills of 5- to 10-year-old children

From an early age, children develop their motor skills. Having good fine motor skills and thus being skilled in precise movements with the hands is important for all kinds of tasks in daily life such as buttering a sandwich, school tasks such as writing and crafts and also playing with other children. But what actually constitutes good fine motor skills?

When we want to answer this question, we often use quantitative tests. These tests determine, for example, how fast a child can perform a task or how many mistakes a child makes. However, quantitative tests say little about exactly how a child performs a movement. By also looking at the quality of motor skills and thus observing exactly how a child performs a movement, we hope to answer the question of what good fine motor skills look like.

With this study, we investigate how the quality of fine motor skills changes as children get older and whether there are differences between boys and girls. We are also looking at how children with, for example, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) move compared to children without developmental problems. Children with ASD and DCD have difficulty performing motor skills and thus perform lower on quantitative tests compared to the norm. However, we do not yet know whether they only move slower and/or make more errors (quantitative), or whether they perform movements differently (qualitative) compared to children without developmental problems.