The relationship between vividness of visual movement imagery and performance on tests of kinaesthetic sensitivity was examined in high school students by comparing performance on three tests of kinaesthesis by high and low imagery students, selected using the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire. High imagers performed significantly better than low imagers when relying on kinaesthetic information. Level of movement imagery predicted performance on a motor task (a manual placement task) when the task was performed in the absence of visual cues (blindfolded). These results reflect the reliance on visual information when performing motor tasks and indicate that, in the absence of visual cues, such information is created from kinaesthetic input via visual imagery. This has important implications for our understanding of the development of kinaesthesis and motor control and may contribute to the development of remedial programmes for children with poor motor ability.

This paper introduces the major concepts and practices of narrative therapy in work with children and adolescents. Drawing on archaeological and narrative metaphors, the principal concepts of externalizing conversations and reauthoring are explained. These concepts are used to derive the main tools of narrative therapy, the formulation of different types and sequences of questions. Two problem areas are used to provide extended examples of a narrative orientation with young people: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and young people's struggles with parents over issues of adolescence. Prospects for the relationship between narrative therapy and psychology are discussed.

Educational psychologists typically respond to child referrals for problematic behaviour by focusing on the problem. Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) provides an alternative that eliminates the time-consuming task of assessment of the “problem.” This application of SFBT involved three groups of primary school teachers, each focused on one child’s behaviour. The participants reported favourable outcomes of reduced problematic behaviour in the three children and increased collegial support.

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.

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.

Psychodynanzic counselling is based upon, and informed by, psychoanalytic insights. The origins include the work of Freud, the Post Freudians, and the Object Relations school. These schools of thought embrace concepts of primitive infantile emotions and states of mind that produce overwhelming feelings of anxiety and fear and against which defences are formed to maintain a psychic equilibrium. Although these defences may have roots in the past, changes can only be effected by thinking about their significance in the present. The psychodynamic counsellor attempts to help clients make sense of their current situation by focussing on the actual dynamics of what is happening outside the counselling room with others and inside the counselling room with the counsellor: Thus, repeated and “stuck” ways of being with others are brought to light in tertms of transference and countertransference. In addition, painful and unbearable feelings are shared and contained in the relationship so that clients are more able to reflect upon and understand their own contribution to their present situation and to respond more constructively to that situation.

This study investigated subgroup and task specificity of self-paced timing in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Self-paced tempo (intertap interval) and timing stability (coefficient of variation) were measured in three repetitive tasks—hand tapping, foot tapping, and jumping in place—in 37 children aged 6 to 9 years classified into gross motor impaired (GM), fine and gross motor impaired (F&G), or coordinated control (CC) groups. Results showed that, although tempo did not vary between coordination groups, timing stability for the hand was significantly worse for the F&G motor impaired group (p < .05). Discriminant function analysis correctly classified 75% of CC, 67% of F&G, and 67% of GM children. Although timing inconsistency of hand tapping identified a coordination subgroup, these tasks provide only moderate prediction of group membership.

Setting appropriate timing and force parameters of muscle activity is a significant part of producing skillful movement behavior: Data reported here suggest that an important characteristic of children with developmental coordination disorders (DCD) is inconsistency and lack of precision in regulating timing and force characteristics of muscle activity to correct for perturbations to balance. Children with and without DCD stood on a moveable platform. Balance was perturbed under fully redundant sensory conditions and under conditions where vision was removed or vestibular input was modified. EMG activity in tibialis anterior and quadriceps leg muscles was recorded. Children with normal motor development produced less force than children with DCD. Children with DCD tended to rely on proximal muscle activity to respond to perturbations to balance and, in contrast to children with normal motor development, modified temporal but not force characteristics of muscle activity when the sensory framework for balance was modified.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the family background, health-related conditions, and the developmental milestones of children identified with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The parents of a sample of 17 children with DCD responded to questionnaires followed by an interview. The responses were analysed for family, health, and developmental background, psychosocial environment, limited movement opportunity, and hereditary factors. Many of the findings were consistent with issues identified in the literature, including demographic profiles, birth trauma, delayed physical developmental milestones, and hereditary factors. The sample included children with learning difficulties and children who were academically accelerated. Of particular interest were cases where limited participation in physical activiry might have curbed motor competence.

Little of the extensive research on gender differences in adolescent self-perception has addressed differences between boys and girls with coordination difficulties. This study of physical self-perception examined 16 boys and 16 girls ranging in age from 13 to 15 years, who had been identified as poorly coordinated during their primary school years. The Physical Self-Description Questionnaire completed by each participant provided scale scores for Appearance, Body Fat, Strength, Coordination, Endurance, Flexibility, Physical Activity, Sports Competence, Health, Global Physical, and Self-Esteem. As a group, the girls ranked their perceptions of Physical Activity and Endurance significantly lower than the boys did. The gender differences were somewhat different from those found in adolescents drawn from general populations.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a study examining the impact of congenital visual impairment on the development of motor skills and kinaesthetic acuity. Studies of children with a visual impairment have consistently noted deficits in motor development. It was hypothesised that these deficits may be linked with poor kinaesthetic sensitivity. Six preschool children with a visual impairment (mean age 55.17 months) were compared to nine classmates (mean age 56.67 months) matched for age, gender, and general verbal ability, on modified tasks from the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (M-ABC) and the Kinaesthetic Acuity Test (KAT). Although the difference between groups was significant for one task only (static balance), it was noted that all differences observed were in the hypothesised direction. Further longitudinal or cross-sectional data are required to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the relationship between vision impairment, kinaesthetic development, and motor skills.

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.

How practitioners conceptualise motor development has important implications for clinical practice, including the framing of the cycle of assessment, prioritisation, intervention, and reassessment. The flexibility and inclusiveness of these frameworks effectively determines what kind of questions are able to be asked concerning the developmental characteristics of children, the kinds of assessment and evaluation tools used to evaluate those characteristics, and the understandings of the processes of motor development that ultimately derive from those investigations.