Cameron Noël
a National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine, School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University , Loughborough , UK.
Ann Hum Biol. 2015;42(4):302-7. doi: 10.3109/03014460.2015.1032349. Epub 2015 Jun 15.
There is widespread concern over the use of maturity indicators to estimate chronological age in children.
To review the definition of maturity indicators, the criteria governing their identification and use and the problems of their interpretation.
The development of maturity indicators, the criteria for their selection and the relationship of maturity to chronological age is critically reviewed.
Maturity indicators are not related to the passage of chronological time, but to the progression of the individual from an immature to a mature state. They are discrete events in a continuous process or a series of processes (e.g. skeletal, sexual, dental, etc.) that highlight uneven maturation within the individual, the independence of maturational processes, sexual dimorphism and the relationship of maturity to size. The use of a timescale of development causes considerable problems in translating biological maturity into a developmental scale. One "year" of maturational time does not equate to 1 year of chronological time and, thus, the passage of time determined by developmental rather than temporal landmarks is both variable and inconsistent. Chronological age determination was not the aim of maturational assessment and, thus, its widespread use as an age determinant poses considerable interpretive challenges.
使用成熟度指标来估计儿童的实足年龄引起了广泛关注。
回顾成熟度指标的定义、确定和使用这些指标的标准以及对其进行解读时存在的问题。
对成熟度指标的发展、选择标准以及成熟度与实足年龄的关系进行批判性回顾。
成熟度指标与实足时间的推移无关，而是与个体从不成熟状态向成熟状态的发展进程有关。它们是连续过程或一系列过程（如骨骼、性征、牙齿等）中的离散事件，这些事件突出了个体内部成熟的不均衡性、成熟过程的独立性、性别差异以及成熟度与体型的关系。使用发育时间表在将生物成熟度转化为发育量表时会引发诸多问题。成熟时间的1“年”并不等同于实足时间的1年，因此，由发育而非时间标志所确定的时间推移是可变且不一致的。实足年龄的确定并非成熟度评估的目的，因此，将其广泛用作年龄决定因素会带来相当大的解读挑战。
