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SCIENCE

The Claim

Correlations between performance on different motor tasks are often weak, which limits the predictive validity of measuring a single motor ability to predict overall motor performance.

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The Short Version

The research literature supports the claim. Across many studies, performance on one motor task often correlates only weakly or modestly with performance on other tasks, so a single measure usually cannot predict broad motor performance well. Some related tasks show moderate links, but not enough to overturn the overall pattern of task specificity.

Caveats

  • This is a general pattern, not a universal rule: closely related motor tasks can show stronger correlations than unrelated ones.
  • The claim concerns prediction of broad or overall motor performance; a single task may still be useful for assessing that specific skill.
  • Several listed sources are secondary or non-auditable, but the conclusion is supported without relying on them.

The Receipts

  1. Task-Specific and Latent Relationships Between Motor Skills in 5- to 6-Year-Old Children

    Frontiers in Psychology (via PubMed Central)

  2. Exploration of the Specificity of Motor Skills Hypothesis in 7–8 Year Old Children

    Frontiers in Psychology (via PubMed Central)

  3. General motor ability: An old issue revisited

    Springer (Psychological Research)

  4. Skill in chess and in a complex motor task are not related

    Experimental Brain Research (Springer)

  5. High intra-task and low inter-task correlations of motor skills in school children

    PLOS ONE / PubMed Central

  6. The General Motor Ability Hypothesis: An old idea revisited

    University of Notre Dame Australia ResearchOnline

  7. Interrelations between three fine motor skills in young adults

    Perceptual and Motor Skills (via Ovid)

  8. The structure of motor ability in preschool children

    Frontiers in Psychology

  9. Predictive validity of the Test of Infant Motor Performance as measured by the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency at school age

    PubMed (Phys Ther.)

  10. Developmental change in predictive motor abilities

    PLOS ONE (via PubMed Central)

+ 7 more sources — see the full list on Lenz

Filed Under

Motor PerformanceMotor TasksPredictive Validity

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