Identifying and Understanding the Patterns of Handwriting Difficulties among School Students in North Chennai, South India

Maternal depression and child development: short and long term sequelae for mothers, infants, and families

Early intensive motor intervention is one of the most important rehabilitation tools to improve gross motor development in infants and toddlers with developmental delay. The combination of conventional rehabilitation training and mesh-intensive suspension training aims to improve core muscle strength, motor control, and balance coordination, and thus improve gross motor function. However, there is no comprehensive clinical evidence on the effects of early intensive exercise intervention combined with conventional rehabilitation on gross motor development and activities of daily living (ADL) in infants and children with developmental delay. The purpose of this study was to investigate the safety and efficacy of early intensive exercise intervention combined with conventional rehabilitation training for gross motor development in infants and toddlers with developmental delay. In the study, the treatment group implemented an early intensive exercise intervention on top of conventional rehabilitation training. The effectiveness of the treatment was evaluated based on the changes in scores on the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS), Peabody Gross Motor Development Scale (PDMS-GM), and Infant and Toddler Activities of Daily Living score. The results showed that all the indicators improved significantly in both groups after the intervention, and the treatment group showed significantly greater improvement compared to the control group (P<0.05). In the treatment group, the AIMS score increased from (36.80 ± 11.38) to (53.12 ± 7.48), the PDMS-GM standardized total score increased from (18.65 ± 2.33) to (28.03 ± 2.51), and the ADL score increased from (32.89 ± 7.02) to (58.92 ± 6.34). These findings highlight the effectiveness of early intensive motor intervention combined with conventional rehabilitation in improving gross motor function and ADL in infants and children with developmental delay.

Food insecurity, poverty and exposure to infectious disease are well-established drivers of malnutrition in children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Early development of cognitive and motor skills - the foundations for learning - may also be compromised by the same or additional factors that restrict physical growth. However, little is known about factors associated with early child development in this region, which limits the scope to intervene effectively. To address this knowledge gap, we compared studies that have examined factors associated with early cognitive and/or motor development within this population. Predetermined criteria were used to examine four publication databases (PsycInfo, Embase, Web of Science and Medline) and identify studies considering the determinants of cognitive and motor development in children aged 0-8years in Sub-Saharan Africa. In total, 51 quantitative studies met the inclusion criteria, reporting on 30% of countries across the region. Within these papers, factors associated with early child development were grouped into five themes: Nutrition, Growth and Anthropometry, Maternal Health, Malaria and HIV, and Household. Food security and dietary diversity were associated with positive developmental outcomes, whereas exposure to HIV, malaria, poor maternal mental health, poor sanitation, maternal alcohol abuse and stunting were indicators of poor cognitive and motor development. In this synthesis of research findings obtained across Sub-Saharan Africa, factors that restrict physical growth are also shown to hinder the development of early cognitive and motor skills, although additional factors also influence early developmental outcomes. The study also reviews the methodological limitations of conducting research using Western methods in sub-Saharan Africa.

Various factors, including culture, influence early childhood motor development, which is an important component of child development. Indonesia, with its cultural diversity, provides a rich context for studying differences in children's motor development. This study aims to review the existing literature on early childhood motor development across different cultures in Indonesia, particularly in Java, Madura, Papua and Bali. The article compares research results from the four cultures and provides a broad understanding of how cultural contexts influence early childhood motor development. This research uses a literature review. Using keywords such as “early childhood motor development”, “Javanese culture”, “Madurese culture”, “Papuan culture”, and “Balinese culture”, relevant literature was collected through searches in academic databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and Indonesia OneSearch. Included articles were those published in the last two decades and focused on early childhood motor development in each of the four cultures. The review showed that in Java, traditional games such as “engklek” and “congklak” play a significant role in supporting fine and gross motor development. In Madura, parenting practices that involve physical activities such as taking children to the fields help improve gross motor skills. In Papua, active lifestyles and intense physical activities, such as walking long distances and climbing trees, accelerate the achievement of gross motor milestones. While in Bali, participation in traditional dance and handicraft making supports children's fine and gross motor development. The conclusion is that cultural elements play a significant role in early childhood motor development in Indonesia. To maximize children's development within their respective cultural contexts, educators, parents and health professionals should have an understanding of these cultural influences. Recommendations for further research and culturally appropriate intervention programs are also presented.

Various factors, including culture, influence early childhood motor development, which is an important component of child development. Indonesia, with its cultural diversity, provides a rich context for studying differences in children's motor development. This study aims to review the existing literature on early childhood motor development across different cultures in Indonesia, particularly in Java, Madura, Papua and Bali. The article compares research results from the four cultures and provides a broad understanding of how cultural contexts influence early childhood motor development. This research uses a literature review. Using keywords such as “early childhood motor development”, “Javanese culture”, “Madurese culture”, “Papuan culture”, and “Balinese culture”, relevant literature was collected through searches in academic databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and Indonesia OneSearch. Included articles were those published in the last two decades and focused on early childhood motor development in each of the four cultures. The review showed that in Java, traditional games such as “engklek” and “congklak” play a significant role in supporting fine and gross motor development. In Madura, parenting practices that involve physical activities such as taking children to the fields help improve gross motor skills. In Papua, active lifestyles and intense physical activities, such as walking long distances and climbing trees, accelerate the achievement of gross motor milestones. While in Bali, participation in traditional dance and handicraft making supports children's fine and gross motor development. The conclusion is that cultural elements play a significant role in early childhood motor development in Indonesia. To maximize children's development within their respective cultural contexts, educators, parents and health professionals should have an understanding of these cultural influences. Recommendations for further research and culturally appropriate intervention programs are also presented.

Early developmental milestones and age of independent walking in orphans compared with typical home-raised infants

Se is an important micronutrient that plays a key role in brain development. Only a few studies have explored the associations between prenatal maternal Se concentration and motor development in early infancy. We have previously described that 36 % of pregnant Nepalese women had Se concentration below the cut-off of 71·1 µg/l in early pregnancy. In the current cohort study, we aimed to describe the association between maternal plasma Se concentration and infant motor development measured at 8–12 weeks of age. From a cohort of 800 Nepalese mother–infant pairs, we included 711 dyads with available data on maternal Se concentration and motor development scores. Maternal Se concentration was measured in plasma samples collected within 15 weeks of gestation using inductively coupled plasma MS. Motor development was measured by the Test of Infant Motor Performance (TIMP). We examined the association between Se concentration and the TIMP scores in regression models adjusted for age of the mother and socioeconomic status. There was no association between maternal Se concentration and the TIMP scores (coefficient for the total TIMP score: −0·035 (95 % CI: −0·105, 0·036). In conclusion, even though a considerable proportion of the women had Se concentration below the cut-off of 71·1 µg/l, there was no association between maternal Se concentration and early motor development in their infants. Our findings do not support Se supplementation during pregnancy to enhance early infant motor development. However, Se may still be essential for other aspects of maternal and infant health.

This research is a qualitative research to describe and analyze the role of mothers as informal educators in stimulating the motor development of early childhood in Kedung Jaya Village, Bogor. The problems in this study are formulated as follows: what is the role of mothers as informal educators in stimulating motor development in early childhood in Kelurahan Kedung Jaya Bogor? The method in this study uses qualitative descriptive analysis methods. The selection of data sources using purposive sampling, namely mothers with early childhood who live in Kedung Jaya Village, Bogor, totaling 3 mothers and 4 children. Data collection uses observation, interview and documentation techniques. Data analysis includes 3 phases, namely: data reduction, data presentation, conclusion drawing and verification. Checking or checking the validity of the data is carried out by triangulation, including: source triangulation and engineering triangulation. Based on the exposure and research findings, it was found that the role of mothers as informal educators in stimulating early childhood motor development has not shown ideal results. Optimizing the role of mothers as informal educators will have a major impact on early childhood motor development. The success of the mother in stimulating the motor development of the child is influenced by the age, level of education, knowledge, living environment, physical condition of the mother and the socioeconomic conditions of the family. Early childhood motor development is one of the important aspects of development for a child's future, therefore researchers recommend two important things that mothers can do in an effort to improve early childhood motor development, namely: 1) Delegating childcare to early childhood education (ECCE) institutions if the mother is working or unable to stimulate the child's motor development, 2) Providing quality time with the child.

The selection of appropriate vocabulary is a crucial and challenging aspect of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention. Core vocabulary lists are frequently used to support vocabulary selection for children who require AAC. A vocabulary domain that has garnered limited attention within the AAC literature is relational basic concepts (RBCs). RBCs describe relationships between objects, persons, or situations, and play a pivotal role in language development, communication, and academic success. For the present study, we created a list of 156 RBCs, drawing primarily from assessments that measure basic concept knowledge in preschool and early elementary school students. We examined the overlap of these words on nine core vocabulary lists. We found that most concepts were not represented on any core lists. Additionally, there was relatively little overlap of RBCs between the core lists. These findings suggest that vocabulary selection resources created using exclusively a core vocabulary approach may have limited utility for identifying many concepts that preschool and early elementary students are expected to know and use. Implications for AAC research and practice are discussed with emphasis on the need for further consideration of RBCs within vocabulary selection practice and the field of AAC at large.

COMMUNITY SERVICE INNOVATION OF THE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS HEALTH CENTER (PUSKESMAS) IN LEARNING MATHEMATICS BASED ON THE TOWN SQUARE. The purpose of this study was to develop an innovation in the school’s mathematics health center in mathematics learning through city square-based mathematics learning. Descriptive method is used with subjects in early childhood and elementary school students who are in the location of the school mathematics health center. The instrument used by the researcher itself, data collection techniques using structured interviews, observation and documentation. The data analysis technique used triangulation, data reduction, data presentation and conclusion drawing. The results showed that the media presented at the Puskesmas were all new and they had not yet gotten them in their respective schools. The attitude of students who become happy, like, cheerful in learning mathematics and easy to understand mathematical concepts, and bring out the creativity of early age and elementary school students in learning mathematics. Student concentration also increases because the learning model used uses an individual approach, so that they can focus more on seeing the student learning process. Parents who accompany their children generally feel happy because their children enjoy learning mathematics. Puskesmas activities have an impact on early age and elementary school students to be happy learning mathematics, like learning with mathematics media, cheerful in following math tutoring and enjoy learning mathematics. This program is also highly supported by parents because it is very helpful in the learning process of their children and eases the family’s economic burden in education.

Clinicians are tasked with using culturally and linguistically appropriate tools to evaluate oral and written language development accurately. However, limited tools account for linguistic diversity in writing. This gap can lead to under- and overdiagnosis of students who speak nonmainstream dialects. This study addressed that gap by developing a writing task to identify nonmainstream dialect features in the writing of early elementary school students. We describe the development, feasibility, and results of pilot testing of the task. One hundred fifty-one first and second graders participated in the study as part of a larger study of nonmainstream dialect use. Students completed standardized literacy and language assessments and the researcher-developed writing task. The writing task used a novel fill-in-the-blank format to identify morphological features that vary between Mainstream American English and nonmainstream varieties such as African American English. Second-grade students performed better on the writing task than first graders, and writing performance was strongly related to standardized literacy scores. Literacy skills were the strongest predictor of Mainstream American English use in writing, but spoken dialect use also correlated with written dialect use. The writing task captured dialect use in early elementary school students' writing, and students' performance on standardized literacy measures predicted written dialect features. These results are a first step toward developing a standardized measure to help professionals appropriately diagnose written expression disorders within linguistically diverse students. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25079891.

This dissertation, “Early Motor Development and Physical Activity: A behavioural Genetic Approach,” focuses on the familial confounders between motor development and physical activity during childhood and early adolescence, to find out the potential modifiable determinant of physical activity. The research is grounded in the theoretical framework of the Stodden model, which suggests a direct causation between motor competence and future physical activity. By utilizing data from the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR), this dissertation explores how genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual differences in motor development and exercise behavior across childhood and early adolescence. The research begins by examining early motor development, including motor milestones before age 2 years (e.g., rolling over, sitting without support, crawling, standing unaided, walking independently) and gross motor skills at age 5 (e.g., throwing, kicking, and catching a ball, and hopping, one-leg standing, walking down the staircase), and how these motor competence can predict later physical activity levels in childhood and adolescence. Chapter 1 introduces the foundational concepts of motor competence and physical activity, and the methodological twin design to quantify the familial effects on motor competence and physical activity. While Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 focus on the genetic underpinnings of physical activity and sedentary behavior, highlighting the limited understanding of molecular genetic findings in children’s exercise ability. The dissertation also addresses the confounding effects of familial factors, such as shared environments and genetics, in the relationship between motor competence and physical activity. Chapters 4 and 5 dive deeper into the genetic and environmental influences on motor milestone achievements and the correlation between early motor competence and later physical activity. The findings reveal that early motor competence explains a modest portion of the variance in physical activity, with a notable genetic influence. Specifically, the results suggest that in boys, the relationship between early motor development and later exercise behavior is largely driven by shared genetic factors. However, in girls, this relationship appears weaker, with no clear evidence of a causal connection between motor competence and physical activity. Finally, Chapter 6 provides a critical review of the Stodden model by synthesizing findings from various reviews and addressing gaps in the understanding of the model's causal pathways. The study concludes that while early motor competence is associated with physical activity, the evidence for a strong causal link is limited. Familial factors, including genetics and shared environment, play a substantial role in the relationship, casting doubt on the straightforward causality proposed by the Stodden model. The dissertation calls for further research using genetically informed methods to better understand the developmental trajectories of motor competence and physical activity.

Relationships between early motor development and language and reading skills were studied in 154 children, of whom 75 had familial risk of dyslexia (37 females, 38 males; at-risk group) and 79 constituted a control group (32 females, 47 males). Motor development was assessed by a structured parental questionnaire during the child's first year of life. Vocabulary and inflectional morphology skills were used as early indicators of language skills at 3 years 6 months and 5 years or 5 years 6 months of age, and reading speed was used as a later indicator of reading skills at 7 years of age. The same subgroups as in our earlier study (in which the cluster analysis was described) were used in this study. The three subgroups of the control group were 'fast motor development', 'slow fine motor development', and 'slow gross motor development', and the two subgroups of the at-risk group were 'slow motor development' and 'fast motor development'. A significant difference was found between the development of expressive language skills. Children with familial risk of dyslexia and slow motor development had a smaller vocabulary with poorer inflectional skills than the other children. They were also slower in their reading speed at the end of the first grade at the age of 7 years. Two different associations are discussed, namely the connection between early motor development and language development, and the connection between early motor development and reading speed.

Cognitive and motor development in early childhood through a holistic learning approach. We identified the positive impact of implementing experience-based and interactive learning methods on cognitive abilities, such as problem solving and children's creativity. Apart from that, this approach also shows improvements in children's motor development, such as eye-hand coordination and gross motor skills. The implications of these findings highlight the importance of using comprehensive learning strategies in supporting the overall growth of early childhood. Motor development is one aspect that must be considered in early childhood. Motor development is often used as a benchmark to prove that children are growing and developing well. Motor development is one aspect that must be considered in early childhood development. Motor development is often used as a benchmark to prove that children grow and develop well. Motor development is something that discusses coordinated physical movements so that in its development required a variety of appropriate stimulation for early childhood. This stimulation can be provided by parents, teachers, and the environment both at home and in the school environment by providing a supportive learning environment for early childhood motor development. Giving stimulation is an effort made by adults in providing facilities and optimal opportunities for optimal development. Providing a lot of time for children to do activities that support their motor development and proper supervision is one of the right efforts in supporting the development of motor physical early childhood.

The Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ): A parental report measure of early motor development