Development Of The Perceptual And Motor Abilities (pama) Test For Preschool Children

Abstract

PURPOSE: Perceptual motor skills of preschool children are an essential aspect of human development and growth because these skills work in complement with cognitive and sensory-motor development. The purpose of this study was to develop the perceptual and motor abilities (PAMA) test for preschool children. The test of PAMA contains four domains of perceptual-motor skill as like body awareness, spatial awareness, directional awareness and temporal awareness. METHODS: Preliminary 53 test items on the perceptual and motor abilities for preschool children were extracted from literatures review and experts. A total of 343 preschool aged children, without reported any health problem (ranged 2-4 years-old; n=70 from 2yr; n=147 from 3yr; n=126 from 4yr) were selected under their parents agreement in Korea. Goodness of fitness indexes (infit and outfit) and item difficulties were calculated by Facets software v3.67.1 (Linacre, 2010) for IRT Rasch model. And many-facets Rasch analysis was applied for different of children’s age parameter. RESULTS: The sub domains of PAMA test were accepted unidimensionality assumption for Rasch model by a principal component analysis. Final 25 items of the preliminary 53 items were selected based on infit and outfit statistics, differential item function indexes by gender and disabilities, and including decision making with experts opinion. Item difficulties (logit score) of the PAMA test appear that was -2.91 to +2.68 (9 items) on body awareness, -2.72 to +1.46 (6 items) on spatial awareness, -2.66 to +2.19 (5 items) on directional awareness and -1.82 to +2.13 (4 items) on temporal awareness. The perceptual and motor abilities in accordance with age in preschool children were increased from 2 years to 4 years-old (2yr mean=13.01, sd=4.66; 3yr mean=17.17, sd=4.22; 4yr mean=21.56, sd=3.87). There was statistical significant difference (χ2 = 942.3) at p=.001 by age of preschool children. CONCLUSIONS: The PAMA test was developed for measuring the perceptual-motor skills with 25 items of preschool children. While the PAMA test has validity and goodness-fitness evidence from this study, numerous psychometric evidences of the PAMA test are required to utilize of developing perceptual and motor skills of children.