Agreement Between Alberta Infant Motor Scale Assessment and Maternal Perception of Motor Development in Full-Term Infants

ABSTRACT

Objectives

To verify the agreement between the Alberta Infant Motor Scale assessment and maternal perception of the motor development in full-term infants.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional study involving 161 infants and mothers. Children were assessed with the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) for motor developmental classification. Mothers completed questionnaires aiming to identify maternal profiles and impressions about their children’s development. The kappa test was used to analyze the concordance between AIMS and mother perceptions.

Results

A total of 83.2% of the sample was classified as typically developing and 16.8% as suspected or delayed development. The maternal impression indicates that 77% of infants are developing typically, 19.9% perceived their infants’ development as advanced, and 3.1% delayed development. There was low agreement between the mothers’ perceptions and AIMS classifications (kappa = 0.153)

Conclusions

Maternal perception of their infant’s development was unsatisfactory for evaluation of motor development because their perceptions did not agree with the findings of the AIMS.

KEYWORDS:

• Infant development
• motor development
• maternal estimates
• AIMS
• parental perception of competence

Authors Contributors

HCF, RSS, RTP, and MGR conceived, designed, and supervised the study. RSS, ALB, HOVSN, and MCC undertook recruitment of patients and data collection. RSS and HCF drafted the manuscript, and all the authors contributed substantially to its revision. RSS and HCF take responsibility for the paper as a whole.

Consenting for Publication

Considering the acceptance of the publication by Developmental Neurorehabilitation the authors authorize the publication of the manuscript.

Ethics Approval

The study was approved by the Institutional UFRJ Maternity School Review Board, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.