Association Between Motor Competence and Percentage of Body Fat in Late Childhood: Comparing Proficiency in Fundamental Motor Skills and Advanced Movement Skills.

Abstract

Background: To solve the problem of a weakening relationship between motor competence and body adiposity from late childhood to adolescence, we defined and utilized advanced movement skills (AMS) characterized by higher biomechanical, physiological, and cognitive processing demands compared with fundamental motor skills (FMS). Methods: As a cross-sectional study, the proficiency in FMS and AMS for participants (43 boys and 45 girls) aged 9-12 years was measured by the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency-Second Edition (BOT-2) and Test of Advanced Movement Skills (TAMS), respectively. Density plots and skewness of scoring distributions between assessments were inspected to examine test scalability. We also compared the incremental validity of BOT-2 and TAMS scores in the multiple linear regression models predicting the percentage of body fat (%BF, measured by Tanita BF-689 body scale). Results: The TAMS outcomes produced a more positively/right-skewed scoring distribution with a skewness of 0.09 compared with -0.49 for the BOT-2 scores, indicating a better test discrimination ability. The TAMS total scores were a significant predictor (B = -0.92, p = 0.03) in the model predicting %BF (R2 = 0.39, p < 0.001) and provided a greater degree of incremental validity (f2 = 0.058) compared with the BOT-2 (f2 = 0.018). Conclusions: This study provides supportive evidence that the proficiency in AMS is more appropriate, compared with FMS, at tracking the increasing motor competence and body adiposity in late childhood, which is helpful for motor skills training, physical activity promotion, and overweight/obesity prevention.