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Gross-motor Skills for Potential Intelligence Descriptive Study in a

Kindergarten

Article  in  Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences · February 2015

DOI: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1115

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804

INTE 2014

Gross-motor skills for potential intelligence

descriptive study in a kindergarten

Mariarosaria Galdi, Cristiana D’Anna, Nicolina Pastena, Filippo Gomez Palomaª

ªUniversity of Salerno, Via Giovanni XXIII, Fisciano (SA) – 84084 - Italy

Abstract

The aim of this study was to carry out a descriptive analysis to investigate possible relationships between mobility and cognitive
development in children of the kindergarten. Method: The study evaluated 123 children, male and female, between the ages of 3
and 6 years. Motors tests for the evaluation of motor skills and the potential intelligence tests were performed on the entire group.
Results: The survey has highlighted a relationship between coordinative capabilities and intelligence potential. This study has
focused more attention on two variables: potential intelligence and gross-motor skills. In the entire sample analyzed the
correlation between them is significant, but not enough to suggest that there is a cause and effect relationship because other
variables could be the causes of the effects. The trend of two variables in the individual groups divided by age groups (3,4,5 years
old) presents positive values of the correlation coefficient. Conclusions: Motor activity, and particularly the training of
coordinative capacity, could be one of the factors that contributes to increasing the potential for cognitive development in
children.

©
© 2015
2014TheTheAuthors.
Authors.Published
Publishedbyby
Elsevier Ltd.Ltd.
Elsevier This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University

Keywords: Motor skills; Gross-motor skills; potential intelligence; gymnastics; kindergarten.

1. Introduction

The last twenty years have seen an explosion of psychosomatic, psychoneuroendocrinology, biogenetics studies
investigating on mind-brain. During the evolutive age, the mind-brain-body relationship, according to the recent
discoveries in neuroscientific field, highlights that the links among brain-mental-physical activity are as narrow as
the subjects are younger.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +0-000-000-0000
E-mail address: mariarosaria.galdi@tin.it

1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1115
3798 Mariarosaria Galdi et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804

Motor sport activities involving the body, through guided, creative and flexible experiences, promote a
harmonious relationship between consciousness and emotion, some interactions between the body and the
environment, which sees the subject increasingly aware of his reactions, able to prepare, predict, control and use
them. An active individual in each action and in his way of being, is a combination of emotional and cognitive
functions, which allows the voluntary control of acting.
The corporeality has a constructive role in the relationship Me-World, which develops around the key idea of an
"active body”, which looks for reality in its various aspects and then redefines it in a constantly renewed dialogue
with the environment, transforming, reshaping and recreating it. Motricity is, therefore, not only the starting point of
any form of psychic development, but a real structure that becomes progressively mental logic, thought and word
organization.
The body is considered a "medium" of knowledge and communication with oneself, with others and with the
environment. Body action in its many expressions gets a representative value of personal identity, expression of
one's own being that goes over the "physicality of its form" and assumes a crucial educational dimension in
evolutionary time. The awareness of the totality of the person, the mind body unity, opens a new era for education
that considers physical and mental appearance not only complementary but inseparable and interdependent.
In order to understand what is written so far and what we will try to prove in the next paragraphs, we should give
a definition of "motor skills and intelligence”.

1.1. Abilities and motor skills

The word capacity means the set of individual physical or sport characteristics, which allows learning and
various physical actions. The capabilities are subjective, partly linked to genetic factors and partly due to finalized
training . Each of us has the same capacity, but the level of development is different. Motor skills can be seen first
as a motor task: to pull the bow, to perform a wheel, to climb a tree, etc. In other words learned activities and those
an individual is able to achieve in optimal time, with high possibility of success and minimum physical and mental
energy use.
Motor skills determine the physical performance and can be divided into:
• conditional ability, physical condition and related specifically to the energy aspects of the movement;
• coordination capacity, dependent on the central nervous system, which is a member of the movement's control.
This is used conventionally, since the motor skills constantly interact with each other.

1.2. Intelligence definition

Intelligence is defined as the general ability to adapt thought and needs to new situations and to solve them, i.e. as
the ability to deal with a problem quickly, affordably and successfully. This definition, adopted by authoritative
scholars (Plagent, Soddart, etc), even if with some terminological variation more than conceptual, seems the clearest
among several didactic definitions. Some additional variations in the definition of intelligence rightly propose the
"degree of intelligence" as the degree of skill to anticipate the experience, in a sort of imaginary experimentation
through which the individual examines all the possible choices and through the imagination manipulates real or
symbolic data on which it operates.
Stern and others define intelligence as the generic ability to use all the items acquired and all the possibilities of
thought to set and solve new problems appropriately, whether abstract or concrete. A problem arises when an
individual seeks a purpose and does not know how to achieve it. The smart guy is not only able to deal with the
problem that arises, but even to find a way out to new questions that may arise (creativity is an aspect of
intelligence: the divergent thinking of Guilford).

2. Objectives
 Mariarosaria Galdi et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804 3799

The objective of this research was to analyze the possible relationships between potential intelligence and
gross-motor skills. For this purpose the study evaluated through field testing, the level of conditional and
coordinative motor skills and assessment of potential intelligence.
Most of the studies are focused exclusively on physiological aspect, and in an experimental workshop context
that severely limits the ecological validity of results, because motor and cognitive children performance are to be
found in a real learning environment. Often to evaluate intelligence, reflecting the earlier consolidated learning,
static measures were used; for this reason, they are not sensitive indices of learning skills.
Based on the assumptions that: the movement is closely related to a better and more effective brain health,
sport through perceptual and motor skills allows the development of higher mental capacity, the increase of neurons
stimulated by exercise provides an increase in the capacity to transmit information, the curiosity to analyze through
a descriptive statistics the possible correlations between cognitive functions and physical performance, was born.
The sport, in fact, stimulating the perception, the verification and the comparison of experience, improves the self-
regulative ability to acquire greater decision-making autonomy. The progressive acquisition of independence that
goes with it, has deeply influenced cognitive, emotional and explorative dynamics by increasing the sense of
effectiveness.

3. Materials and methods

3.1 The sample

The sample consists of 123 children between the ages of 3 and 6 attending the public kindergarten "Don Alfonso
De Caro", in Lancusi (Salerno). From a motor point of view, at this stage (3-6 years), the child is aware of his
actions changed from involuntary automatic movements to global and organized ones. Knowledge is always tied to
the body that becomes the vehicle of communication and expression of his way of being and, on the basis of the
latter, it will activate a motor nature trail to reach the aims of the nursery school.

3.2 Tools

One of the first issues in the setting of the research was to choose the Protocol to assess children's global motor
skills. After the study of national and international literature, the choice fell on two protocols already widely used at
international level:
3800 Mariarosaria Galdi et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804

COORDINATIVE AND GENERAL ABILITIES TEST

TEST STANDARDIZATION
Assessment gross- motor skills Test TGM Ulrich Dale A.

INTELLIGENCE TEST
TEST STANDARDIZATION
Potential Intelligence Test TIP Fabio R.A. Erickson

The choice has considered some guidelines:

• the protocols were validated at international level;

• they were adapted to the school;
• they were available in our reality;
• they do not require expensive and unavailable tools.

3.2.1 Ulrich D.A. Assessment gross-motor skills test

A key component of most educational kindergarten and primary programs is the development of fine motor skills.
During this period child's motor skills continue to evolve. An important aspect of motor monitoring is the early
detection of children with difficulties in the context of physical activities and sports. Standardized and well
organized test are therefore required, including basic motor skills.

Test Objectives

The first objective in the construction of TGM was to create a test including content frequently used in teaching
with children aged 3 up to 10 years. The second aim was to develop a test that could be used by a large number of
professionals with a minimal amount of expertise. The third aim was to construct a test that can provide both
regulatory and criteria results. The last goal was to consider a priority the qualitative assessment of the harmonic
sequence of the development of gross- motor skills rather than the simple result of motor performance. Mastering
the major gross-motor skills requires that the child develops a mature movement and this is more important than the
quantitative results expressed in terms of time, distance and accuracy of performance.

The development of gross-motor skills

Williams (1983) defines gross-motor development as "use progressively more and more skillful of the totality of
the body in an activity that involves large muscle groups and that requires spatial and temporal coordination of
simultaneous movement of several body segments". Gross-motor development covers mainly abilities used to move
the body from one place to another (locomotion) and to move and take objects. Many authoritative scholars agree
that gross-motor skills develop sequentially (Gallahue, 1982; Robertson, 1982; Williams, 1983; Zaichkowsky,
Zaichkowsky and Martinek, 1980). It is generally accepted that people develop through the various motor steps with
a different rhythm, which depends on biological and environmental factors (Malina, 1980; Rarick, 1982; Seefeldt
and Haubenstricker, 1982).
Seefeldt and Haubenstricker (1982) noted, in fact, that people have problems that can reduce their learning
potential in many other more advanced skills, when they are not able to perform proper levels in relation to skills
and gross-motor basic schemes.

Description of the Test

Gross-motor skills test is administered individually. It evaluates gross-motor capabilities of children aged
between 3 and 10 years. The test measures twelve gross-motor skills, which are frequently teaching object with
 Mariarosaria Galdi et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804 3801

preschoolers and in primary school. Skills are grouped into two subtest, each of them assesses a different aspect of
gross-motor development: the locomotion and the control of the object.

3.2.2 Test of Potential Intelligence(TIP)

TIP measures cognitive changes and elasticity in adapting to new situations in children and young people from 3
to 19 years. It is a "dynamic test" because, in addition to measuring the results obtained in the various tests, also
provides a procedure of teaching within the situation test, which evaluates the level of potential development (in
addition to the level of development already achieved) and to avoid the risk of getting wrong results not because of a
real intellectual problem but for a social and cultural disadvantage. It consists of different items and it is suitable for
various types of subjects: standard learning level students (to verify the potential intellectual development), pupils
with any disadvantage due to their social or cultural background (which can lead to low performance of traditional
tests), pupils with learning disabilities and students with low-performing random.
The tests are divided according to school level from kindergarten, primary school, secondary school of first
grade and second grade secondary school. The simplicity of administration and interpretation of the results makes
the instrument TIP useful not only for developmental psychologists, but also for teachers.
A shift of interest from product to process can be realized with dynamic indexes. The dynamic test is motivated
by the inadequacy of conventional tests in providing accurate information on individual learning abilities, processes
of change and plasticity of cognitive processes.

Dynamic indexes got in this research, measure the advices used by subject to solve problem in two steps:
LEARNING, when the subject tries to solve new problems
TRANSFER, when the subject uses problem solving learning for new and more difficult problem solving.
The test consists of 14 items (7 related to learning step and 7 related to transfer step). The last ones require the
same rules to solve the problem of the previous items and a new rule that must interact with the others so that the
subject can find a solution.
The suggestions are graduated to get the solution of the problem.

4. Results

From the analysis of the data, we have obtained several indexes that allow us to verify our hypothesis. We also
developed different graphs that show the values of coordinative abilities, potential intelligence and correlation
between TGM and TIP about the whole sample studied. The index of determination R2 is 0.5093. This figure shows
that the model fit to the data is sufficient. There is a strong positive correlation between the two variables with a
Pearson index r equal to 0.71, which highlights the existence of a significant link between the coordinating factor
and cognitive function.
The weakness of this study is the fact that it would be necessary to study the phenomenon on a larger and
heterogeneous sample.
3802 Mariarosaria Galdi et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804

Graph shows the comparison between the average value of the

intelligence quotient tests in three groups of potential reference.
QUOTIENT TIP
Pupils of 3 years old: 87,6 DS 3 years old: 9,107
Pupils of 4 years old: 85,8 DS 4 years old: 9,328
Pupils of 5 years old: 95,9 DS 5 years old: 10,669

Graph. 1: Test of Gross motor skills (All Sample)

Graph shows the comparison between the average value of the intelligence
quotient tests in three groups of potential reference.
QUOTIENT TIP
Pupils of 3 years old: 87,6 DS 3 years old: 9,107
Pupils of 4 years old: 85,8 DS 4 years old: 9,328
Pupils of 5 years old: 95,9 DS 5 years old: 10,669

Graph 2: Test of Potential Intelligence (All Sample)

 Mariarosaria Galdi et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804 3803

Graph 3: Gross motor skills and Potential Intelligence correlation (All Sample)

5. Discussion and conclusions

The synthetic graphs just reported shows the comparison study, in which each variable evaluated is divided for
study groups.
The biggest difference is appreciable in the coordinative capabilities and gross-motor skills, where the values
attributed to children of 5 years are almost higher than those attributed to the sample of pupils of 3 and 4 years as
well as the results of the evaluation of potential intelligence.
This research does not have a scientific value for the limited investigative sample. It gives, however, a significant
value confirming data reported in other studies, a correlation between gross-motor skills and cognitive abilities. The
next step will be to verify the findings on a larger sample. Considering the approach that several samples have
shown to potential intelligence test it was, in fact, observed empirically as older children have faced the TIP with no
problem. Among children a healthy competition was born finishing as early as possible without asking for many
suggestions, but mostly it was shown the greater determination and their self-confidence.
Starting from this point of view, it is believed that these aspects can be found in people constantly engaged in
open sport skills such as team games which are strongly conditioned by game situations, and then it could be
interesting to evaluate whether or not that correlation exists.
In conclusion, the study has shown that there is a correlation between gross-motor skills and potential intelligence
experience that takes us back to ancient times in which a healthy mind needed a healthy body.
We can also, through this study, identify children who are significantly delayed compared to peers in the
development of gross-motor skills or cognitive development and who require a personal intervention, with an
educational program within the gross-motor or cognitive development skills. It is also possible to evaluate individual
progress and effectiveness of a program aimed at the recovery of individuals with disabilities or with special
educational needs.
 3804 Mariarosaria Galdi et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3797 – 3804

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