Motor performance of children remains stable over decades

Longer television times, lower physical activity and lower socioeconomic status were also significantly associated with lower dynamic balance performance. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

The ability of Swiss children aged seven to 18 to perform specific physical tasks has barely changed over the past 35 years – to the surprise of researchers. .

A recent studyExternal link, conducted by the Child Development Center at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich, examined more than 1,000 children between 1983 and 2018 and analysed various dimensions including pure motor performance, fine motor skills, and dynamic balance. While most of these data remained stable over the 35-year period, dynamic balance performance decreased notably every ten years.

Study author Oskar Jenni said he was surprised that the motor performance of children today is the same as that of their parents’ generation. “We would have expected children today to be better at fine motor skills because they use screens and computer mice to make frequent movements with their fingers and hands,” Jenni said.

Secular trends are changes in human performance or characteristics that occur in a population over longer periods of time. These trends are largely explained by environmental changes such as globalisation, urbanisation, social and cultural changes in society and exposure to modern digital technology.

These considerable social and cultural changes and modern digital technologies could be the reason for the declining dynamic balance performance, suggest the results of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. “Children today sit more than in the past and move less,” Jenni explained.

The dynamic balance was tested by vertical and horizontal jumping performance. Standing long jump stabilised between the 1950s and 1980s and then declined for the following 15 years. Another possible explanation in the declining dynamic balance is the increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) in children over this time period.

Modern lifestyles

More television, lower physical activity and lower socioeconomic status were also significantly associated with lower performance. The study suggested that adolescents’ modern lifestyles provide fewer opportunities to practise dynamic balance.

However, finding an explanation for the lack of improved fine motor skills is not easy, according to Jenni. The same phenomenon can be observed in other areas, such as intelligence, he noted.

While scores on IQ tests increased internationally until the 1990s, a slowdown in this growth has been observed since then. “It seems humanity has reached its potential,” Jenni said.