Canonical Relationships among Perceptual-Motor, Perceptual, and Cognitive Behaviors in Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature and extent of relationships among perceptual-motor, perceptual, and cognitive behaviors in 189 young, normal children. An extensive battery of tests was administered to 61 prekindergarteners, 63 kindergarteners, and 65 first graders. Canonical correlation analysis revealed that significant and high relationships exist between perceptual-motor and perceptual behaviors at the two younger age levels, between perceptual-motor and cognitive behaviors at kindergarten only, and between perceptual and cognitive behaviors at all levels tested. In agreement with the literature, the magnitude of the relationships and amount of shared variance diminished with age from kindergarten to first grade, except for the cognitive and perceptual behaviors relationship. Visual behaviors were more important contributors to the perceptual-motor relationships than were auditory behaviors, while the reverse was found for contributors to the cognitive relationships. Fine perceptual-motor behaviors were more important for describing relationships than were gross perceptual-motor behaviors. In general, gross perceptual-motor behaviors were of little importance in explaining any significant relationship found in this study. Overall, the most consistent and important contributors to significant relationships among the various behavioral domains and subdomains included the Bender (fine), Shape-O-Ball (fine), discrimination (auditory perception), figure-ground (visual perception), alphabet, word recognition, and number-related tasks (cognitive). The single most consistent and important contributor was the fine perceptual-motor task, the Bender test.