TY - JOUR
T1 - Motor ability and working memory in Omani and German primary school-aged children
AU - Jansen, Petra
AU - Scheer, Clara
AU - Zayed, Kashef
N1 - Funding Information:
The study was approved and funded by the Deanship of Research at Sultan Qaboos University, IG/EDU/PHED/17/02. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors would like to thank Josef Bauer, Buthaina Al Ghafri, Johannes Groitl, Stefan Gru-ber, Melinda Herfert, Mosab Al Kalbani, Anna-Katharina Render and Anna Wargel for their contributions in data collection.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Jansen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2019/1
Y1 - 2019/1
N2 - This study investigated the motor ability and working memory performance of Omani and German primary school-aged children. One hundred eighty-five children from public schools participated in a gross motor test that integrated whole body coordination, three different ball tasks, and a 20-meter run. Furthermore, they completed four working memory tests (the Digit-Span Test forward and backwards and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test forward and backwards). Two MANOVAS with the different motor and working memory tests and one univariate analysis of the general motor ability with the between-subject factors group and gender were conducted. Additionally, correlations between motor ability and working memory scores were executed. German children outperformed Omani children in the overall measurement of motor ability, (p = .01) and all aspects of working memory, (all p< .015). There were no correlations between motor and cognitive variables, when analyzing the results for the Omani and German children separately. These findings may be a result of different educational styles or socioeconomic status and must be investigated in more detail.
AB - This study investigated the motor ability and working memory performance of Omani and German primary school-aged children. One hundred eighty-five children from public schools participated in a gross motor test that integrated whole body coordination, three different ball tasks, and a 20-meter run. Furthermore, they completed four working memory tests (the Digit-Span Test forward and backwards and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test forward and backwards). Two MANOVAS with the different motor and working memory tests and one univariate analysis of the general motor ability with the between-subject factors group and gender were conducted. Additionally, correlations between motor ability and working memory scores were executed. German children outperformed Omani children in the overall measurement of motor ability, (p = .01) and all aspects of working memory, (all p< .015). There were no correlations between motor and cognitive variables, when analyzing the results for the Omani and German children separately. These findings may be a result of different educational styles or socioeconomic status and must be investigated in more detail.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0209848
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0209848
M3 - Article
C2 - 30640912
AN - SCOPUS:85059887631
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 14
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 1
M1 - e0209848
ER -