Desempenho coordenativo de crianças entre os 6 e os 10 anos de idade do concelho de Vouzela

Abstract

Motor coordination (MC) is critical to child's development and can beaffected by several factors, such as: age, sex, weight status and physicalactivity. The aim of this study was to analyse the effects of age, sex and bodymass index (BMI) and also verify the correlation between physical activity levelsand coordinative performance (CP) of Portuguese children. Methodology: thestudy included 286 children aged 6 to 10 years, 137 ♂ and 149 fem., from Vouzelacounty schools. To evaluate MC, the battery test KTK (Körperkoordinationstestfür kinder - KTK) was used, which was developed by German researchers(Kiphard e Schilling, 1974) and is composed of four items: (1) Balance Bar (BB);(2) Side Jump (SJ); (3) Monopedal Jump (MJ); (4) Platform Transfer (PT). BMIwas used to describe the weight status and calculated from weight and heightmeasurements (weight (kg) / height (cm²)). With this index children were dividedinto three groups: normal weight, overweight and obese. The evaluation of PAwas made with accelerometry. In the statistical analysis the following tests wereused: descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), t-test of independentmeasures and factorial ANOVA and Pearson correlation. Results: Childrensignificantly improved their CP through age. It was also noted that the CP levelsfound in this study revealed that boys showed higher MC levels than girls in MJ.In addition, with the exception of the SJ, normal weight children demonstrated ahigher MC than overweight and obese children in all tests. With respect to PAlevels, a positive correlation was not found with the CP. Conclusion: The resultspoint to the importance of detection of low CP levels so that interventionprograms can be applied, allowing the children to achieve adequate levels ofMC according to their age