Test of Gross Motor Development-3 (TGMD-3) with the Use of Visual Supports for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Validity and Reliability.

The team added picture cards and visual schedules to the TGMD-3 gross motor test. They gave the new version to children with autism and to neurotypical peers. A small quasi-experimental design checked if scores went up and if the test stayed reliable.

Kids with autism scored higher when visual supports were in place. The adapted protocol also showed excellent reliability between raters. In short, the pictures helped children show what they could really do.

Melo et al. (2021) repeated the same idea on the MABC-2 and saw small gains in ball and balance scores, giving a conceptual thumbs-up to the visual-support trick.

Pan et al. (2009) and Hilton et al. (2010) sound gloomy: both found big gross-motor gaps in autism. Their negative results do not clash with Bao et al. (2017); they simply show the size of the delay that the new protocol is trying to measure more fairly.

Byiers et al. (2025) add a twist: less variable walking speed tied to better adaptive skills, but more varied walking actions did too. That mixed pattern reminds you to track both consistency and flexibility when you interpret any motor score.

If a child with autism tanks the regular TGMD-3, try the visual-support version before you label them delayed. The same pictures and schedules you use for teaching work here for testing. One quick switch can give you cleaner data and save the child from needless referrals.