Maternal malnutrition affects every aspect of fetal development. The present study asked the question whether a low-protein diet of the mother could result in motor deficits in the offspring. Further, to examine whether cerebellar pathology was correlated with motor deficits, several parameters of the postnatal development of the cerebellum were assayed. This is especially important because the development of the cerebellum is unique in that the time scale of development is protracted compared with that of the cortex or hippocampus. The most important result of the study is that animals born to protein-deficient mothers showed significant delays in motor development as assessed by rotarod and gait analysis. These animals also showed reduced cell proliferation and reduced thickness in the external granular layer. There was a reduction in the number of calbindin-positive Purkinje cells (PC) and granular cells in the internal granular layer. However, glial fibrillary acidic protein-positive population including Bergmann glia remained unaffected. We therefore conclude that the development of the granular cell layer and the PC is specifically prone to the effects of protein malnutrition potentially due to their protracted developmental period from approximately embryonic day 11 to 13 until about the third postnatal week.

The development of intralimb and interlimb synergies during spontaneous kicking were examined in a longitudinal study of fullterm and preterm infants who were tested at 4 weekly intervals from 8 weeks to 20 weeks of age. The degree of coupling between the hip, knee, and ankle joints of each leg and between the same joint of both legs was studied using time-series analyses that determined the cross correlations and phase lags between joint angles. The findings of the current study do not support the argument that interlimb coordination followed a similar pattern to intralimb coordination (Thelen, 1985), as different patterns of development emerged for interlimb and intralimb coordination. In addition, developmental differences were evident for the preterm infants despite correcting for age.

The current study examined kinaesthetic acuity and Performance IQ in preprimary children (aged 4-5 years) at risk of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Individual assessment of 317 children over four sessions at their pre-primary centre identified 31 children at risk of Developmental Coordination Disorder. These children were matched with 31 control children on age, gender, and Verbal IQ. The two groups were assessed using three Performance IQ subtests of the WPPSI-R and the Kinaesthetic Acuity Test (KAT, Livesey & Parkes, 1995). The results indicate that kinaesthetic acuity and Performance IQ subtests significantly differentiate children at risk of DCD from control children. These results suggest a need to assess the efficacy of kinaesthetic training in young children at risk of DCD. Furthermore, psychologists may be able to assist in the early detection of children at-risk of DCD via the WPPSI-R assessment results routinely obtained for young children.

Most popular tests of motor proficiency have been developed using classical test theory. Recently, item response theory (IRT) has been used to address some of the difficulties inherent with these traditional psychometric approaches. This paper focuses on the application of IRT in the psychomotor domain where analyses involving both dichotomous (Cole, Wood, & Dunn, 1991; Werder & Bruininks, 1988) and polytomous criterion referenced measurements (Puderbaugh & Fisher, 1992) have met with equivocal results. The application of the method to quantitative data has to date proved challenging. An example reported here is based on outcome measures used in the development of a test of movement skills for children aged 5 and 6 years. The results appear very promising, but some caution is required in interpreting results.