Object Control Skill Performance Across the Lifespan: A Cross Sectional Study

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Studies on object control skills (OCS) have described changes in movement patterns over time, but mostly in children and adolescents, young adults, or older adults. Most of these studies focused on only one skill and usually only on the process- or product-oriented outcomes. Thus, this study aimed to explore OCS performance in children, younger adults, and older adults. Methods: A total of 120 male participants took part in this study, including 78 primary school children (7.96 ± 1.22 years), 22 young adults (23.5 ± 2.34 years), and 20 older adults (69.5 ± 4.43 years). We assessed the process-oriented performance of throwing, kicking, and catching performance using the component approach. Throwing and kicking velocity was recorded with a STALKER SOLO 2.0 radar gun. For catching, the number of caught balls was assessed. Results. Young adults had the highest component levels in all OCS; they also produced significantly higher throwing and kicking velocities than children and older adults. The proportion of participants achieving mastery or advanced skill proficiency varied significantly in children (6.4–32.1%), young adults (63.6–100.0%), and older adults (10.0–95.0%). With few exceptions, the results showed mainly moderately significant correlations between developmental levels and throwing/kicking velocity or number of successfully caught balls for all age groups. Conclusion: Our data indicate that children in particular rarely demonstrate advanced OCS and that there is a decrease in throwing and kicking but not in catching in older adults compared to the younger age groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Throwing
• kicking
• catching
• process- and product-oriented assessment
• children
• young adults
• older adults

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Patrick Schütze for their valuable assistance in the data collection process. Also, the authors wish to thank the school and all the children, adults, and older adults for participating in this study.

Ethics

Informed written consent was obtained prior to the beginning of testing. In the case of children (<18 yrs), additional informed written consent was also provided from their parent or guardian. Participants were told that they could opt out at any time. All procedures were in accordance to the Declaration of Helsinki (2013) with ethical standards, legal requirements and international norms. The institutional ethics committee approved the project.

Additional information

Funding

The work was not supported by any funding agencies.