Background: Around 800 million young children worldwide have cognitive-developmental limitations due to issues related to biological, environmental, and psychosocial factors. These problems lead to educational challenges, limited skill development, and higher unemployment rates. Therefore, timely interventions addressing the underlying problems in…

Background: Perceptual motor development is crucial during early childhood and not properly addressing it in physical education (PE) can be detrimental. Aim: To determine the effect of a South African curriculum-aligned PE intervention on the visual-motor integration (VMI), visual perception (VP) and motor coordination (MC) of 6-year-old children.…

Handwriting is still critical to student success in the classroom; however, schools have been de-emphasizing formal handwriting instruction. This study evaluated the effect of the "Size Matters Handwriting Program" on handwriting legibility and visual-motor skills among kindergarten students in general education classrooms. A two-group…

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore cognitive performance and visual motor integration, and investigate the relationship between them in preschool children in a community. Forty-nine participants were selected by stratified random sampling from a local community school and community child development center in Thailand. The instruments…

School readiness is recognized as one of the key starting points for children's further success in their school work and in their subsequent career. However, many kindergarten teachers still miss and long for a comprehensive, reliable and standardized diagnostic tool which could help them recognize the level of children's school readiness. That is…

Copying characters presented previously (delayed copying) is an important skill in Chinese literacy acquisition. The relations of delayed copying and a set of literacy-related skills (including vocabulary knowledge, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic awareness), visual-orthographic judgment,…

Background: Research has shown that paired associate learning (PAL) plays an important role in children's word reading across different languages. However, little is known about the construct of PAL and its relationship with word reading in Chinese children. Methods: A total of 204 second-year kindergarten children from Mainland China were…

Early childhood education aims to support children's whole development and their school readiness. Children develop a knowledge about reading, writing and learning before elementary school. This knowledge is called early literacy and it's a key factor for school readiness. This study delves to investigate the early literacy skills of children and…

This study investigated the construct of paired associate learning (PAL) and its associations with Chinese word writing in kindergarten children. A total of 188 Chinese children (95 boys, mean age = 5.65 years; SD = 0.34) from [Xi'an], Mainland China in the third year of kindergarten participated in this study. Children were assessed on measures…

A considerable body of research indicates that children's executive function (EF) skills and related school readiness constructs are important for early learning and long-term academic success. This review focuses on EF and a related construct, motor skills with a focus on visuo-motor integration, as being foundational for learning, and describes…

Background: Visual motor integration plays an important role in academic skills of learners in the early school years and can have an impact on their overall academic performance. Aim: This study aimed to determine the influence of socio-economic status (SES) on changes in visual-motor integration, visual perception and motor coordination over a…

This study explored transactional associations among visuomotor integration, attention, fine motor coordination, and mathematics skills in a diverse sample of one hundred thirty-five 5-year-olds (kindergarteners) and one hundred nineteen 6-year-olds (first graders) in the United States who were followed over the course of 2 school years.…

The current study aims to assess the effectiveness of a program based on a multi-sensory strategy in developing of visual perception for primary school learners with learning disabilities. The study employed the quasi-experimental method on the experimental group of learners. A training program based on multi-sensory strategy was employed on a…

In the present study, 144 second- and 150 fourth-grade Chinese students were recruited to complete a Chinese character learning task to explore the specific contributions of sensory-motor components (i.e., visual, motor, and haptic systems) of handwriting to Chinese character learning. After matching for age, nonverbal IQ, and a series of…

Early fine motor ability is significantly associated with later achievement, even after controlling for typical child-level predictors of school outcomes. Previous longitudinal studies have confirmed this but typically have not included low-income, at-risk populations. Research has distinguished two different aspects of fine motor skills: those…