Are gross motor skills and sports participation related in children with intellectual disabilities?
Object-control motor skills drive sports participation for kids with ID—assess and train these specifically.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Westendorp et al. (2011) watched kids with intellectual disabilities play. They compared their motor skills to peers without disabilities.
The team also asked how often each child joined sports teams or clubs. They wanted to see if better motor skills led to more play time.
What they found
Kids with ID scored much lower on every gross motor task. The gap was large and clear.
Only one skill mattered for sports sign-ups: object-control. Kids who could catch, throw, and kick joined more teams, no matter their group.
How this fits with other research
Oliveira et al. (2023) found the same link in autism. Object-control and locomotor skills predicted how often kids with ASD played at home, school, and in the community. The 2023 study widens the 2011 ID finding to a new diagnosis.
Pan et al. (2009) and Hilton et al. (2010) also saw big motor gaps in ASD. Their kids moved like children half their age. Together these papers show motor delay is common across ID and ASD, not just one group.
Movahedi et al. (2011) adds a social twist. Blind students who played sports scored higher on social maturity. Pair this with Marieke’s result: better object-control → more sports → more chances to socialize.
Why it matters
If you serve kids with ID or ASD, screen object-control first. A quick catch-throw-kick test tells you who will likely skip sports. Add short, fun drills for throwing and catching to your session plan. Better object-control can open the door to teams, friends, and weekend games.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study compared the specific gross motor skills of 156 children with intellectual disabilities (ID) (50 ≤ IQ ≥ 79) with that of 255 typically developing children, aged 7-12 years. Additionally, the relationship between the specific gross motor skills and organized sports participation was examined in both groups. The Test of Gross Motor Development-2 and a self-report measure were used to assess children's gross motor skills and sports participation, respectively. The children with ID scored significantly lower on almost all specific motor skill items than the typically developing children. Children with mild ID scored lower on the locomotor skills than children with borderline ID. Furthermore, we found in all groups that children with higher object-control scores participated more in organized sports than children with lower object-control scores. Our results support the importance of attention for well-developed gross motor skills in children with borderline and mild ID, especially to object-control skills, which might contribute positively to their sports participation.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.01.009