Relations between Preschool Children’s Fine Motor Skills and General Cognitive Abilities

ABSTRACT

An increasing number of findings suggest that cognition is grounded in sensorimotor experiences. Research suggests that fine motor skills (FMS) link to cognitive abilities. Existing studies, however, lack conceptual and methodological differentiation regarding FMS and little is known about the directional nature of links. In study 1, we measured three types of FMS, namely dexterity, grapho-motor skill, speed-dominated FMS in a sample of preschool children (n = 78) aged 4.42 years, and analyzed their links with nonverbal reasoning and general knowledge. Factor analyses verified the existence of these three distinct subsets of FMS. A unique link was found for dexterity and reasoning after controlling for age, attention and processing speed. In study 2, using a cross-lagged-panel design with two measurement points one year apart in preschool (n = 84), a cross-lagged link from four-year-old children’s dexterity to their reasoning skills at age five was demonstrated. Findings support the idea of FMS being involved in the development of cognitive abilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The term dexterity, instead of manual dexterity is used in the following.

² Preschools in Germany relate to nonmandatory institutions for children between 3 and 6 years focusing on play and child-centered developmental goals.

³ Winzorizing as a method of handling outliers is discussed in Reifman and Keyton (2010).

⁴ CLPD allows analyzing changes in criterion variance over time and thereby differs from a mere prediction of the absolute criterion value at t2 by the absolute predictor value at t1.