The relationship of age, early motor skills and observable child behaviors in young children with developmental delays.

The study measured children at one timepoint, so it cannot show that age causes motor skills, motor skills cause behavior, or motor training changes behavior. Only ambulatory children with documented delay or disability receiving early intervention services in the Pacific Northwest were included, and deaf or blind children were excluded, so results may not apply to non-ambulatory children or other regions. The TGMD-2 is not standardized for children younger than 3, and raw scores were used, so motor scores may not be comparable to normative scores. Compliance and adaptive behavior were coded by research assistants during a short home play session, not by a named standardized behavior instrument, and the paper reports inter-rater reliability of 88% but no other measurement details. The methods describe a higher compliance score as more compliance, while the analysis section says lower scores represented more compliance; this scoring inconsistency makes direction harder to interpret. Age range is described as 2 to 4 years in the purpose but inclusion criteria were 2 to 3 years, so the sample age range is unclear.

No funder or conflict-of-interest statement is provided in the supplied text. It says the study was part of a larger family-based intervention investigation and that the funding source would be added when the manuscript is accepted.