Influence of age, sex, hearing loss, and balance on kicking development by deaf children.

Abstract

The ability to kick a stationary or moving ball successfully is requisite to several games and sports. A previous study (2) suggested that many deaf children may be delayed in their development of this important skill. The present smdy was designed to investigate the influence of age, sex, hearing loss, and balance on the development of mature kicking form among deaf children. Seventy-five boys and 57 girls bemeen the ages of 3 and 14 yr. participated in the study. Within this group, 125 (95%) had a hearing loss of at least 60 dB in the better ear. The remaining 7 children had hearing losses ranging from 30 dB to 55 dB. To determine level of kicking development, subjects were individually assessed on the Ohio State University Scale of Intra Gross Motor Assessment (OSU-SIGMA) (4). Sratic and dynamic balance were measured by Items 2 and 7 of Subtest 2 of the Short Form of the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (1). The basic design for this study was a cross-sectional correlation design whereby a set of predictor variables (age, sex, hearing loss, static balance, and dynamic balance) were correlated with kicking level (Lv 1, 2, 3, 4 of the OSU-SIGMA) the criterion variable. Data from the kicking and balance tests were subjected to linear discriminant analysis (3). From this analysis, structure coefficients were interpreted for the significant discriminant functions. A structural coefficient is an estimate of relationship between a variable and a function. Only structure coefficients with a value greater than .30 were used in the interpretation. The result for kicking was significant for the first function (Wilks's Lambda = .GI, p < .001). Suucrure coefficients for age (.82), hearing loss (.32), static balance (.45), and dynamic balance (.43) gave meaning to the function. These results imply that balance proficiency is predictive of mature form in kicking among deaf children. Children with the greatest hearing loss were also more likely to achieve mature kicking form; however, there is no present explanation to account for this finding. Sex (-.22) did not appear to influence development of kicking among the deaf children of this study.