the mediating role of social skills in the relationship between motor ability and internalizing...

Infant and Child DevelopmentInf. Child. Dev. (2012)Published online in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/icd.1773

The Mediating Role of Social Skillsin the Relationship between MotorAbility and Internalizing Symptomsin Pre-primary Children

*CorrespondenUniversity, GP

Copyright © 201

Alicia Wilson, Jan P. Piek* and Robert KaneSchool of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin Health Innovation ResearchInstitute, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia

Impaired motor development can deprive a child of constructiveengagement in early motor activities and thus diminish opportun-ities for the acquisition of key cognitive, social and emotionalabilities. The aim of the current study was to test a model wheresocial skills mediate the relationship between motor ability andinternalizing symptoms in pre-primary children. A cross-sectionalresearch design was employed to assess the mediation modelusing data from 234 boys and 241 girls aged 4 to 6 years. Structuralequation modelling provided support for the mediating role ofsocial skills as assessed by the child’s teacher. Replication of thesefindings in longitudinal studies, elucidating how social skillsrelate to motor impairment, could have implications for theprevention of psychopathology in young children with motorimpairment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: motor development; social skills; pre-primary children;mood; internalizing symptoms

INTRODUCTION

The development of social competence in young children has long been consideredan important aspect of children’s development (Peterson, 2004) and hasbeen closely associated with the development of motor skills (Bart, Hajami, &Bar-Haim, 2007; Cummins, Piek, & Dyck, 2005; Lingam et al., 2010). When playinvolves physical activity, it provides children with the opportunity to developand enhance their motor skills in unison with their social skills (Dau, 1999;Isenberg & Quisenberry, 2002).

ce to: Jan P. Piek, School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, CurtinO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

2 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A. Wilson et al.

Previous research has indicated that children with poor motor ability, such asthose with developmental coordination disorder (DCD; APA, 2000), are morelikely to withdraw from physical play with other children (Barbour, 1996; Cairneyet al., 2005; Smyth & Anderson, 2000), are asked to play with other children lessoften and have fewer friendships than their typically developing peers (Barbour,1996). It has been suggested that the physical limitations experienced by childrenwith motor skill difficulties cause children to avoid the movements required insocial play and physical education classes (Cairney et al., 2007). Hops (1983)suggested that children with poor motor ability may simply fail to find willingplaymates on the playground as a result of their physical limitations.

Early childhood also serves as a crucial period in the development of emotionalcompetencies and psychological adjustment (Peterson, 2004). Accordingly,children with delays in their motor development are known to experience higherlevels of emotional difficulties such as depressive and anxious symptomatology(Dewey, Kaplan, Crawford, & Wilson, 2002; Piek, Bradbury, Elsley, & Tate, 2008;Rigoli, Piek, & Kane, 2012; Sigurdsson, van Os, & Fombonne, 2002). Depressionand anxiety are commonly grouped into a broadband domain of dysfunctionknown as internalizing symptoms (Kovacs & Devlin, 1998), which also includelow mood, nervousness, fearfulness, worry and somatic complaints.

Longitudinal and cross-sectional research informs us that elevated levels ofpsychosocial symptoms in early childhood can persist through childhood andinto adolescence in children with motor impairment (Gillberg & Gillberg,1983; Hellgren, Gillberg, Bagenholm, & Gillberg, 1994; Losse et al., 1991;Skinner & Piek, 2001). This trajectory is further supported by longitudinalstudies of psychosocial functioning of children with motor skill impairment (Piek,Barrett, Smith, Rigoli, & Gasson, 2010; Shaffer et al., 1985; Sigurdsson et al., 2002).These studies are unique in their demonstration of longitudinal links between motorability and later internalizing symptoms and provide preliminary support for theargument that motor ability deficits precede the development of internalizingsymptoms.

The association between social skill deficits and internalizing symptoms hasbeen well documented in children (Blechman, McEnroe, Carella, & Audette,1986; Cole, Martin, Powers, & Truglio, 1996; Dalley, Bolocofsky, & Karlin, 1994;Kennedy, Spence, & Hensley, 1989; Wierzbicki & McCabe, 1988). Behaviouraltheorist Lewinsohn (1974) argued that deficits of social competence lead todepressive symptoms (known as the social skill deficit model), in part byundermining access to social contact and social reinforcement. It was laterrecognized by Coyne (1976) that this inability to engage in competent socialinteractions and engender social reinforcement often results in increased peerrejection and posited that it is this lack of social acceptance that resultsin depression.

Cole (1991; Cole et al., 1996) expanded on the early work of Lewinsohn’s ‘socialskill deficit model’ to give rise to the competency-based model of depression, apopular theoretical model used to explain depressive symptoms in youngchildren. Cole argues that a lack of competence in a number of key developmentalareas, including social competence, leads to depressive symptoms. This arose fromresearch identifying the cumulative effect of deficits in multiple competency areas,namely social and academic competence, on the development of depressivesymptoms in children (Cole, 1990). Inversely, baseline depressive symptoms werenot predictive of changes in social competence (Cole et al., 1996). A more recentlongitudinal study in children 8–12 years of age assessed social competence andinternalizing symptoms at four time points and demonstrated that social

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2012)DOI: 10.1002/icd

Motor ability, Social Skills and Mood in Preschool Children

competence in childhood had a negative longitudinal relationship with internalizingsymptoms in adolescence (Burt, Obradovic, Long, & Masten, 2008).

Despite the established empirical associations between motor ability, socialskills and internalizing symptoms in different bivariate combinations, no studyhas yet explored how these variables interact in combination. Furthermore, mostof the existing studies have utilized special populations with extreme scores onmeasures of one construct, such as children with DCD or children with clinicaldepression. Additionally, motor impairment, social skill deficits and internalizingsymptoms have all been found to exist in children as young as 4 and 5 years ofage, and longitudinal research suggests that these symptoms persist throughchildhood, adolescence and adulthood. The aim of the current study was to inves-tigate a mediator model whereby the association between motor impairment andinternalizing symptoms is mediated by the child’s level of social skills. The currentstudy investigated this model in a sample of typically developing children andcontrolled for verbal intelligence, gender and age.

METHOD

Participants

Children for this study were drawn from a typically developing sample of532 children ranging from 4 years and 3months to 6 years and 11months of age(M= 5 years and 5months, SD = 4.91). These children were involved in an inter-vention study (Piek et al., 2010) involving 12 low socio-economic status pre-primary schools in metropolitan and surrounding regional areas. Although wehad access to longitudinal data, we chose to conduct cross-sectional analyses onthe pre-test scores because of possible contamination from the intervention atsubsequent assessments.

Participation in the present study relied on the return of teacher reportmeasures. Children were therefore omitted from the study if teachers did notreturn these measures. The teacher response rate of 90.3% eliminated 51 childrenfrom the sample. In addition to this, six cases were deleted where the child wasrecorded with a diagnosis of a physical or developmental disability, which couldaffect their performance on the outcome measures. The final sample consisted of234 boys and 241 girls whose ages ranged from 51.47months (4 years and3.47months) to 78.17months (6 years and 6months) (M= 5 years and 5months,SD= 3.98months).

Materials

Bruininks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Second Edition—Short Form (Bruininks& Bruininks, 2005)

The Bruininks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Second Edition—ShortForm (BOT-2 SF) is an individually administered assessment designed to measuremotor skills in children and youths aged 4 to 21 years. The short form of the BOT-2contains 14 items taken from the eight subtests of the long form, providing acomposite score of general motor skill. It takes 15–20min to administer. A highcorrelation of .80 was found between the short and long form of the BOT-2(Bruininks & Bruininks, 2005). The short form has been recommended for researchin field settings (Spironello, Hay, Missiuna, Faught, & Cairney, 2010).


A. Wilson et al.

Scores for the BOT-2 SF are reported as total point scores, scaled scores (M= 50;SD= 10) or percentile ranks. For the purpose of this study, total point scores wereused as a measure of general motor ability as the proposed model statisticallycontrolled for age and gender. Scores range from 0 to 88 with higher scores indicat-ing greater motor proficiency (Bruininks & Bruininks, 2005). Strong internalconsistency reliability has been reported with a Cronbach’s alpha of .80 in asample of children aged 4 through 7years (Bruininks&Bruininks, 2005). In the currentsample, internal consistency reliability was found to be acceptable with Cronbach’salpha equal to .75.

Social Skills Rating System (Gresham & Elliot, 1990)The Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) assesses a number of child social beha-

viours that impinge on the development of their social competence (Walthall,Konold, & Pianta, 2005). The elementary version of the SSRS, appropriate forchildren aged 5–11 years, has both a parent (SSRS-P) and a teacher (SSRS-T) reportversion. The 57-item teacher version was used in the current study. Teachers areasked to rate the frequency of the child’s behaviours on a 3-point Likert scale(0 =Never, 1 = Sometimes, 2 =Very often). Scores for the SSRS-T are reported as rawscores, scaled scores or percentile ranks. For this study, raw scores were used asa measure of general social skills as the proposed model statistically controlledfor age and gender. Raw scores range from 0 to 80, with higher scores indicatinghigher levels of social competence (Fantuzzo, Manz, & McDermott, 1998).

Strong internal consistency reliability has been reported (Cronbach’s alpha= .94),in addition to a strong 4-week test–retest reliability (r= .87) (Gresham & Elliot,1990). For the current study, the internal consistency reliability was strong withCronbach’s alpha equal to .89 for the SSRS-T.

Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997)The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief screening question-

naire used to identify behavioural and emotional problems in children and youthsaged 4 to 16 years. The questionnaire lists 25 positive and negative behaviouralattributes and asks the informant to indicate whether or not the child demonstrateseach of the behavioural attributes on a 3-point Likert scale (0=Not True, 1 =SomewhatTrue and 2=Certainly True). The 25 items provide subscales for conduct problems,inattention/hyperactivity, emotional symptoms, peer problems and prosocial behav-iour. This study used the teacher-reported emotional symptoms subscale (SDQESS-T)as a measure of internalizing symptoms. The emotional symptoms subscale containsfive items measuring symptoms of low mood, nervousness, fearfulness, worry andsomatic complaints (Cooke & Jones, 2009). Scores range from 0 to 10 with higherscores indicating greater emotional problems.

Acceptable internal consistency reliability has been reported with a Cronbach’salpha of .83 for the total difficulties score and .77 for the SDQ ESS-T (Becker,Woerner, Hasselhorn, Banaschewski, & Rothenberger, 2004), along with a test–retest reliability (with a 4–6month interval) of .80 for the total difficulties scoreand .65 for the SDQ ESS-T (Goodman, 2001). In the current sample, Cronbach’salpha was .82 for the SDQ ESS-T. The SDQ ESS-T has demonstrated constructvalidity with correlations of .77 (Becker et al., 2004) and .67 (Van Leeuwen et al.,2006) with the anxious/depressed subscale of the Child Behaviour Checklist(Achenbach, 1991).



Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence—Third Edition (Wechsler, 2002)The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence—Third Edition

(WPPSI-III) is a standardized test measuring intelligence in children between theages of 2 years 6months and 7 years 3months. It is one of the most commonly usedmeasures of intelligence in young children for both clinical and research purposes(Sattler, 2001). The WPPSI-III contains 14 subtests that can be used to yield a full-scale IQ, verbal IQ and performance IQ. The unstandardized verbal IQ, which usesraw scores from the Vocabulary and Information subtests, served as a measure ofverbal intelligence in the current research, functioning as a control variable in themodel. Unstandardized scores were utilized as age and gender were controlled forstatistically in the model. The average internal consistency reliability for verbal IQis .95. The internal consistency reliabilities of the WPPSI-III subtests of interest are.86 for information and .83 for vocabulary. Test–retest reliabilities, with a meaninterval of 26 days, fall between .84 and .93 (Wechsler, 2002).

Procedure

This study adheres to the ethical guidelines set out by the National Health andMedical Research Council of Australia andwas granted approval from the UniversityHuman Research Ethics Committee and the Department of Education.

TheWPPSI-III and BOT-2 SFwere administered to each childwith parental consentduring a 2-week testing period at each school by a team of trained research assistants.The children were administered one to two tests in one session to avoid fatigue andreturned to complete the remaining tests on another day in the 2-week testing period.Teachers completed the SSRS-T and the SDQ ESS-T for each child.

Data Analysis

Preliminary analyses were conducted to test for moderating effects of age andgender on the bivariate correlations among the three variables in the structuralmodel. According to the results of a LISREL (Version 8.8; Jöreskog & Sörbom,2006) covariance structure analysis, the bivariate correlations among the threevariables were invariant across gender (w2 (6) = 0.03, p= 1.00) and age (partitionedinto four age groups: w2 (18) = 0.07, p= 1.00).

Although there was no evidence to suggest that age and gender moderated therelationships among the study variables, both gender and age were significantly corre-lated with the study variables as described in the Results section. Partial correlationscontrolling for the potentially confounding covariates of age, gender and verbal IQwere therefore generated in SPSS PASW 18 (IBM, 2009) and subjected to structuralequation modelling with LISREL 8.8 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2006) to determine thesignificance of the direct pathway between motor ability and internalizing symptomsand the mediating pathway through social skills. Because the p-values for the pathcoefficients might be attenuated by intra-classroom clustering in the data (Tabachnick& Fidell, 2007), Stata 10 (StataCorp, 2007) was used to correct the attenuation. Thecorrected p-values were then used to evaluate the significance of the pathways.

RESULTS

Assumption Testing

The data were tested for violations of the structural equation modelling assump-tions of linearity and multivariate normality (Kline, 2005). There were no obvious


A. Wilson et al.

curvilinear trends in the data. There was, however, a violation of multivariatenormality. This was addressed by deriving the fit statistics for the saturatedand mediator models from the Satorra–Bentler chi-square, which adjusts for thenon-normality (Jöreskog, 2005; Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2004).

It is assumed that the BOT-2 SF, the SSRS-Tand the SDQESS-Teach load on a singlefactor. In order to confirm this assumption, a confirmatory factor analysis using robustmaximum likelihood was conducted on each of the three instruments. Robustmaximum likelihood estimation was used to account for violations of multivariatenormality. The results indicated that a one-factor solution provided a good fit for allthree instruments. These results are consistent with our proposedmeasurementmodelin which each latent variable ‘drives’ a single indicator (Figure 1).

Descriptive Statistics

Means and standard deviations for BOT-2 SF (motor ability), SSRS-T (social skills) andSDQ ESS-T (internalizing symptoms) are presented by gender in Table 1. Comparedwith boys, girls scored significantly higher on both social skills as reported by theirteachers (t(473) =4.609, p< .001) and motor skills (t(473)=2.140, p= .033). There wasno significant gender difference for internalizing problems.

The proportion of girls to boys was relatively even (50.7% vs 49.3%). MeanBOT-2 SF (motor ability) scores were within the normative ranges (Bruininks &Bruininks, 2005). Significant movement difficulties were indicated for the 6.1%(n= 29) of children who scored below the 15th percentile, which is consistent withpopulation prevalence estimates of DCD (APA, 2000). Mean SSRS-T (social skills)scores were within normative ranges (Gresham & Elliot, 1990). Social skill

Figure 1. The measurement and structural components of the saturated model showingstandardized path coefficients (b), 95% confidence intervals, standard errors and signifi-cance levels — the latter two values having been adjusted for intra-school clustering inthe data.


Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the study variables by gender (N=475)

M SD Range

Girls (n= 241)Motor ability 45.91 10.23 19–69Social skills 44.37 9.77 14–60Internalizing symptoms 1.46 1.91 0–9Boys (n=234)Motor ability 43.96 9.57 17–64Social skills 40.00 10.90 10–60Internalizing symptoms 1.54 1.99 0–9


problems were indicated for the 16.6% (n= 40) of girls and the 14.5% (n= 34) ofboys who scored in the ‘below average’ range (Gresham & Elliot, 1990). MeanSDQ ESS-T (internalizing symptoms) scores were also within normative ranges(Hawes & Dadds, 2004). Emotional problems were indicated for 12.8% (n= 30) ofboys and 15.4% (n= 37) of girls scoring in the ‘at risk’ range (i.e. ≥5 for boys and≥4 for girls). These figures are also in accordance with population estimates ofprevalence of psychological problems in Australian children (Sawyer et al., 2000).

Preparing a Partial Correlation Matrix for Model Testing

Bivariate correlations were computed between the three study variables (motorability, social skills and internalizing symptoms) and the three proposed controlvariables (gender, age and verbal IQ). The correlation matrix (Table 2) indicatesthat as age increased, motor ability and social skills increased, whereas internaliz-ing symptoms decreased; as verbal IQ increased, motor ability and social skillsincreased; and girls performed better than boys in terms of both social skills andmotor ability.

On the basis of these results, gender, age and intelligence were included ascontrol variables in the analyses. Partial correlations, adjusting for the controlvariables, were computed among the study variables. The partial correlationmatrix is presented in Table 3.

Model Testing

The structural models tested in the present study were single-indicator models.When only one indicator is associated with a latent variable, there is insufficientinformation for LISREL to compute measurement errors and factor loadings.These parameters must therefore be fixed for each indicator by setting its measure-ment error to one minus its reliability coefficients and its factor loading to the

Table 2. Bivariate correlation matrix between study and control variables (N= 475)

Motor ability Social skills Internalizing symptoms

Gender .098* .207** �.02Age .332* .200** �.157**Verbal IQ .186** .267** �.07

Note: Male coded 1/female coded 2. *p< .05; **p< .01.


Table 3. Partial correlations among the study variables controlling for gender, age, andverbal IQ (N= 475)

Measure 1 2 3

1. Motor ability – .274** �.128*2. Social skills – �.193**3. Internalizing symptoms –

*p< .01; **p< .001.

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square root of its reliability coefficient (see Goodwin & Plaze, 2000, p. 286). LISRELused these parameters, in conjunction with the matrix of partial correlations, to derivepath coefficients and fit statistics for the structural model depicted in Figure 1.

The structural model depicted in Figure 1 is a single-indicator saturated modeland therefore fits the data perfectly. Interest was therefore focused on the signifi-cance of its pathways. The direct pathway from motor ability to internalizingsymptoms was non-significant, whereas the mediating pathways from motorability to social skills and from social skills to internalizing symptoms were bothsignificant. The significance of the two component mediating pathways does notguarantee the significance of the overall mediating pathway from motor abilitythrough social skills to internalizing symptoms (e.g. Paolini, Hewstone, Cairns,& Voci, 2004). The LISREL estimate for the overall mediating pathway, however,was significant (estimate of indirect effect =�.06, p= .003).

These results are consistent with a full mediator model in which there is nodirect pathway from motor ability to internalizing symptoms; the significantrelationship between the two variables being completely mediated by social skills.The omission of the direct pathway in the mediator model did not significantlyreduce model fit (w2difference(1) = 2.71, p= .098) and did not dramatically change themagnitude of the path coefficients for the indirect pathways, thereby confirmingthe redundancy of the direct pathway.

DISCUSSION

The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between motor ability,social skills and internalizing symptoms in a non-clinical sample of pre-primarychildren. We hoped to expand understanding of these variables and their associationsat a time when intervention may be critical in preventing the deterioration of a child’spsychosocial functioning. The results indicated that social skills mediated the relation-ship between motor ability and teacher-reported internalizing symptoms.

The hypothesis that the relationship between motor ability and internalizingsymptoms would be fully mediated by social skills was supported. Additionally,as the model was a good fit for the data, preliminary support is provided for thevalidity of the causal pathways in the model. However, these results do not implycausal relationships, as the data were correlational and collected at a single timepoint. Thus, further longitudinal and experimental research is recommended toclarify the causal mechanisms involved in the associations between motor ability,social skills and internalizing symptoms.

The environmental stress hypothesis (Cairney, Veldhuizenc, & Szatmari, 2010)was used as an overarching framework for explaining the development of intern-alizing symptoms in children with motor difficulties. More specifically, it wasargued that motor difficulties (i.e. the primary stressor) expose an individual to a



cascade of secondary stressors (i.e. social skill deficits), which subsequently lead tonegative appraisals of self and increased internalizing symptoms. The findings inthe current study provide partial support for this framework, as it applies to achild with motor difficulties. The mediation model, however, accounted for onlya small amount of the variance in internalizing symptoms, suggesting that thereare other unmeasured factors that play a part in the development of internalizingsymptoms in pre-primary children. This is consistent with the understanding thatthe aetiology of psychopathology across the lifespan is multi-factorial (Koplewicz& Klass, 1993).

The current study predicted a significant positive relationship between motorability and social skills. After accounting for the influence of control variables,measurement error and clustering, we found motor ability to be significantlypositively correlated with social skills. This finding is congruent with previousresearch that has identified lower levels of social skills in children with limited motorability (Cummins et al., 2005; Hops, 1983; Lingam et al., 2010). This finding suggeststhat childrenwithmotor difficulties are less likely to develop or display the social skillsnecessary for effective social interactions with peers and supports the limited amountof research that has identified an association between motor impairment and socialskill deficits in children as young as 4 and 5years of age (Bart et al., 2007; Green, Baird,& Sugden, 2006). This finding is also congruent with theories of child developmentthat argue that poor competency in one domain (e.g. motor impairment) negativelyinfluences the development of other competency domains (e.g. social competence)(Cole, 1991; Cole et al., 1996, Peterson, 2004).

The current study expanded on previous research by using a measure of socialcompetence that specifically targets the quality of social skills in children, whereasthe majority of previous research has associated motor difficulties with secondaryindicators of social competence such as peer popularity (Broekhoff, 1977) and self-perceived social acceptance (Schoemaker & Kalverboer, 1994). These findingstherefore complement the limited research that has assessed the quality of socialskills in association with motor ability in pre-primary children (Bart et al., 2007;Green et al., 2006). These studies have identified small but significant correlationsbetween motor ability and measures of socially skilled behaviour. The stronger(moderate) correlation observed in the current study is likely a result of controllingfor measurement error, which tends to attenuate the true correlation betweenconstructs (Kline, 2005).

The association between motor ability and social skills could be explained bythe limited participation in physical play activities observed in children withmotor difficulties (Barbour, 1996; Cairney et al., 2005; Smyth & Anderson, 2000).In the context of Harter’s (1987) theory of motivation, this may be a result of thechild’s desire to avoid situations in which they might demonstrate low ability. Thislimited participation could have influenced the results in two ways. Firstly, as aconsequence of limited participation in play activities, children with motordifficulties may deprive themselves of opportunities for skill growth in both thephysical and social domains. That is, children with motor difficulties may notdevelop the social skills required for socially competent behaviour. This wouldbe in line with the writings of Vygotsky (1978) who argued play to be a key contextin which to develop a repertoire of socially competent behaviours. Research on theassociation of play and social competence supports this argument (e.g. Berk,Mann, & Ogan, 2006; Connolly & Doyle, 1984; Lindsey & Mize 2000; Newton &Jenvey, 2010). Secondly, this withdrawal from participation could have limitedthe opportunities in which the child’s teacher could observe the child’ssocial skills.


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After accounting for the influence of control variables, measurement error andclustering, a significant negative relationship between motor ability and internaliz-ing symptoms was observed. This suggests that as children’s level of motor abilityincreases, their level of internalizing symptoms decreases, supporting previousresearch that has identified higher levels of internalizing symptoms such asanxiety and depression in children with limited motor ability (Dewey et al.,2002; Francis & Piek, 2003; Piek et al., 2007; Tseng, Howe, Chuang, & Hsieh,2007). This finding also complements the limited amount of research that hasidentified the association of motor impairment and internalizing symptoms inchildren as young as 4 and 5 years of age (Green et al., 2006; Piek et al., 2008).

The current study targeted schools in regional areas and of low socio-economicstatus in an effort to sample a larger proportion of children with motor andpsychosocial difficulties than what would be expected in a general populationsample. Despite these efforts, a comparison of the characteristics of the currentsample with normative data indicated that the sample acquired was quite repre-sentative of the Australian pre-primary population. As such, the current studyuniquely identifies the association between motor ability and internalizingsymptoms in a general population sample, where previous research has identified thisassociation in special population samples of children diagnosed with DCD (e.g. Greenet al., 2006).

Findings in the current study support the hypothesis that social skills would besignificantly negatively correlated with internalizing symptoms. This finding iscongruent with the previous research that has identified a concurrent negativerelationship between social skills and internalizing symptoms (Blechman et al.,1986; Cole et al., 1996; Dalley et al., 1994; Kennedy et al., 1989; Wierzbicki &McCabe, 1988). This would be consistent with the view that social skill deficitshave either a causal influence (Cole, 1990; Cole et al., 1996; Lewinsohn, 1974) oract as a vulnerability factor in (Segrin & Flora, 2000) the development of internal-izing symptoms in children. It is equally plausible, however, that internalizingsymptoms preceded the development of social skill deficits (Segrin, 2000).

An important caveat in the examination of the proposed model is that psychopath-ology is likely to arise through a variety of developmental pathways. Individualfactors are not expected to result in depressive outcomes. Rather, a causal complexof biological, psychological and environmental factors must be considered. Thisresearch, however, focused on the contribution of a small number of specific factorsto the development of internalizing symptoms, as it would be impossible to examineall possible contributing factors.

CONCLUSION

The confirmation of the proposed mediation model in the current study highlightsthe importance of addressing social skills when attempting to understand therelationship between motor difficulties and internalizing symptoms. Thesefindings also suggest that social skills and internalizing symptoms are not simplyco-existing difficulties for a child with motor impairment, rather they interact.However, the current study, because of the design, could not confirm the directionof these relationships.

In conclusion, these findings increase our understanding of how motor ability,social skills and internalizing symptoms in pre-primary children interact indifferent contexts. This could have particular implications for the prevention ofpsychosocial problems in children with motor impairment.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to acknowledge the children, parents and teachers who participatedin this research. We would also like to thank Sue McLaren for her assistance withthe coordination of this project. This project was funded as part of the Animal FunPre-Primary Movement Project by a Healthway Health Promotion Research Grant(#18052) through the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation.

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