McGlashan Hannah L, Blanchard Caroline C V, Sycamore Nicole J, Lee Rachel, French Blandine, Holmes Nicholas P
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
Hum Mov Sci. 2017 Dec;56(Pt B):29-36. doi: 10.1016/j.humov.2017.10.013. Epub 2017 Oct 31.
Children spend a large proportion of their school day engaged in tasks that require manual dexterity. If children experience difficulties with their manual dexterity skills it can have a consequential effect on their academic achievement. The first aim of this paper was to explore whether an online interactive typing intervention could improve children's scores on a standardised measure of manual dexterity. The second aim was to implement a serial reaction time tapping task as an index of children's finger movement learning, and to see whether performance on this task would improve after the intervention. Seventy-eight typically developing children aged between 8 and 10 were tested at their school on the pre-intervention Movement Assessment Battery for Children (2nd edition; MABC-2) and tapping tasks. Twenty-eight of these children volunteered to be randomly allocated to the intervention or control group. Children in the intervention group had a choice of two online games to play at home over a period of four weeks, while the children in the control group were not given these games to play. The intervention and control groups were then re-tested on the MABC-2 manual dexterity and the tapping task. Children in the intervention group significantly improved their manual dexterity scores in the MABC-2 compared to the control group. On average, all children learnt the tapping sequence, however, there were no group differences and no effect of the intervention on the tapping task. These results have important implications for implementing a freely available, easy to administer, fun and interactive intervention to help children improve their manual dexterity skills.
儿童在学校的大部分时间都在参与需要手部灵巧性的任务。如果儿童在手部灵巧性技能方面遇到困难，可能会对他们的学业成绩产生相应影响。本文的首要目的是探究在线互动打字干预是否能提高儿童在标准化手部灵巧性测试中的分数。第二个目的是实施连续反应时敲击任务作为儿童手指运动学习的指标，并观察干预后该任务的表现是否会有所改善。对78名年龄在8至10岁之间发育正常的儿童在学校进行了干预前的儿童运动评估量表（第二版；MABC - 2）和敲击任务测试。其中28名儿童自愿被随机分配到干预组或对照组。干预组的儿童可以在四周内选择两款在线游戏在家中玩，而对照组的儿童没有这些游戏可玩。然后对干预组和对照组重新进行MABC - 2手部灵巧性和敲击任务测试。与对照组相比，干预组儿童在MABC - 2中的手部灵巧性得分显著提高。平均而言，所有儿童都学会了敲击顺序，然而，两组之间没有差异，干预对敲击任务也没有影响。这些结果对于实施一种免费、易于管理、有趣且互动的干预措施以帮助儿童提高手部灵巧性技能具有重要意义。
