Papers by Helena Viholainen
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, Nov 21, 2019
Background: The benefits of physical activity (PA) on children's health and wellbeing are well es... more Background: The benefits of physical activity (PA) on children's health and wellbeing are well established. However, the benefits of PA on academic performance and particularly on mathematics performance warrant systematic analysis. Mathematics is one of the core subjects in school education globally. Methods: We systematically searched, analysed and synthesized the literature on the effects of school-based PA interventions on mathematics performance in children aged 4-16. A total of 29 studies consisting of randomised trials and other interventions with control groups were identified through a systematic search, and 11 of them provided sufficient data and appropriate design for a meta-analysis. Results: Of the 29 studies involving 11,264 participants, positive overall effects of a PA intervention on mathematics performance were found in 13 studies (45%) and neutral overall effects in 15 studies (52%). Only one study reported a significant negative result for a subgroup of children in the first half of the intervention. In a risk-of-bias assessment, 12 studies had low, 17 moderate, and none had a high risk of bias. The meta-analysis of 11 studies suggested an overall small positive effect (ES = 0.23) of the interventions. Only one study in the meta-analysis indicated a negative effect in one of the intervention groups. Conclusions: Adding PA to the school day may enhance children's mathematics performance or has no negative effects on performance. Several types of PA interventions can be recommended to be added to the school day.
The aim of the present study was to expand our knowledge on the importance of motor skills to lan... more The aim of the present study was to expand our knowledge on the importance of motor skills to language development. The three main questions were the relationship between early motor development and later motor skills, between early motor and language development, and, between early motor development and reading speed in children at risk for dyslexia. The study was a part of an international project, the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The samples in this study consisted of 64, 88, 75 children with familial risk for dyslexia, respectively, and 66, 88, 79 children in a matched control group, respectively. The main results of the study indicate that early body control predict moderately well motor skills at 3.5 years of age. Surprisingly, however, the early hand control skills and later fine motor skills were not developmentally related. Nevertheless, it was found that children with early developing hand control were poorer in their gross motor skills at 3.5 years. The results related to the language development indicate that the early motor milestones and later language skills were associated to the familial risk for dyslexia. Five distinct subgroups of motor development were found, three in the control group and two in the at-risk group. The children in the at-risk group who were slow in their overall motor development had fewer words and shorter sentences at 1.5-2.0 years of age. Also development at the ages of 3.5-5.5 years of age showed that their vocabulary was smaller and morphology was poorer than among the children in all the other subgroups. The same trend was found in reading speed at the end of the first grade. In conclusion, the results suggest that in children with familial risk for dyslexia, information on early motor development is valuable in screening those children at risk for slower language development already before the appearance of words, as problems in early motor development in this population are an early sign of possible reading difficulties. Benefits of early motor intervention to language development in children with familial risk for language-based difficulties are discussed.
Journal of Experimental Education, Jun 15, 2023
BMC Pediatrics, Sep 7, 2019
Background: Early identification of children with motor difficulties, such as developmental coord... more Background: Early identification of children with motor difficulties, such as developmental coordination disorder (DCD), is essential. At present only a fraction of children with DCD are identified. The purpose of the study was to systematically review the literature from 1994 to 2017 on observational screening tools and to evaluate the validity, reliability and usability of the questionnaires used. Methods: The review of the literature was conducted to synthesize the data from five electronic databases for children aged 6-12 years. The following databases were searched: Academic search Elite (EBSCO), ERIC (ProQuest), MEDLINE (Ovid), PsycINFO (ProQuest), and SPORTDiscus with Full Text (EBSCO). The studies meeting our inclusion criteria were analyzed to assess the psychometric properties and feasibility of the measures. Results: The literature search retrieved 1907 potentially relevant publications. The final number of studies that met the inclusion criteria of our systematic review was 45. There were 11 questionnaires for parents, teachers and children. None of the questionnaires was valid for population-based screening as the only measurement tool. Conclusions: There are many challenges in using initial screening tools to identify children with motor difficulties. Nevertheless, many promising questionnaires are being developed that can provide information on functional skills and limitations across a variety of tasks and settings in the daily lives of children with DCD. The review provides much needed information about the current scales used in many clinical, educational and research settings. Implications for assessing psychometric properties of the developed questionnaires and further research are discussed.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, May 17, 2022
This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original... more This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details.
Human Movement Science, Jun 1, 2017
Objectives: Observational screening instruments are often used as an effective, economical first ... more Objectives: Observational screening instruments are often used as an effective, economical first step in the identification of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). The aim was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Finnish version of the Motor Observation Questionnaire for Teachers (MOQ-T-FI). Methods: The psychometric properties were tested using two separate samples (S1: age range 6-12, M 9y 5mo, females 101, males 92; S2: age range 6-9, M 7y 7mo, females 404, males 446). Teachers completed the MOQ-T-FI in both samples, and in sample 2 teachers' ratings were compared to student's performance on the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (MABC-2). Internal consistency was investigated by using Cronbach's alpha, predictive validity by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, concurrent validity by correlation analysis, and construct validity by factor analysis. Results: The MOQ-T-FI behaves consistently with its original Dutch version. The internal consistency was excellent (a = 0.97). The bifactor model, with one general factor and two specific factors, fit the data significantly better than the first-order model. The concurrent validity with the MABC-2 was moderate (r = 0.37 p < 0.001). Sensitivity was 82.5% and specificity 44.5%, respectively. Conclusion: Notwithstanding the low specificity the MOQ-T-FI can be considered as a promising screening tool in the school environment for Finnish children at risk of motor learning problems.
Human Movement Science, Aug 1, 2021
Physical & Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics, 2006
Asunta, P., Viholainen, H., Westerholm, J. & Rintala, P. 2015. Cultural Adaptation of Motor Obser... more Asunta, P., Viholainen, H., Westerholm, J. & Rintala, P. 2015. Cultural Adaptation of Motor Observation Questionnaire for Teachers – development of Finnish version (MOQ-T-FI). Liikunta & Tiede 52 (1), 78–86. Children with motor learning difficulties is a heterogeneous group which terminology is also very diverse. In Finland we use terms `developmental coordination disorder, DCD ́ and `motor developmental disorder ́ to describe these children. Many children present with co-occuring conditions in addition to their motor difficulties. DCD affects 5 to 6 % of school aged children, meaning that each classroom has an average of one student who needs help with motor learning. Despite the fact that disorder is so common, teachers lack tools to identify the children who have motor learning problems. Moreover, little information of this phenomenon is available within educational literature. The purpose of this study was to make a cultural translation from the Motor Observation Questionnaire f...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
This study examined the malleability of math self-efficacy (SE) among children with poor calculat... more This study examined the malleability of math self-efficacy (SE) among children with poor calculation fluency via an intervention that targeted four sources of SE (mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasions, and emotional and physiological states). The effect of pure strategy training was contrasted with an intervention that integrated strategy training and explicit SE support. Moreover, the changes in SE source experiences and their relation with math SE, as well as the relation between math-SE profiles and calculation fluency development, were examined. In a quasi-experimental design, 60 Finnish children with calculation fluency problems in Grades 2 to 4 participated in strategy training (N = 38) or in an intervention that integrated SE support with strategy training (N = 32) for 12 weeks. The results showed that the explicit SE intervention integrated with strategy training enhanced math SE among children with poor calculation fluency and low SE (effect size, r...
Learning and Individual Differences, 2018
Can reading fluency and self-efficacy of reading fluency be enhanced with an intervention targeti... more Can reading fluency and self-efficacy of reading fluency be enhanced with an intervention targeting the sources of self-efficacy?
The SAGE Handbook of Dyslexia
Physical & Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics, 2006
The relationship between the achievement of early motor milestones in infancy and later motor dev... more The relationship between the achievement of early motor milestones in infancy and later motor development was studied in 130 children with (N = 66, 35 male/31 female) and without (N = 64, 31 male/35 female) familial risk for dyslexia. A structured parental questionnaire was used to assess motor development in infancy, and the Movement Assessment Battery for Children was used to assess motor skills at age 3.5 years. No differences were found at the group level and therefore the structural equation model was constructed by entering both groups simultaneously. An Early Body Control factor, computed from the infant data, explained 38% of the variance of the Gross Motor Skills factor at the age of 3.5 years. The results suggest a relationship between gross motor milestones in infancy and gross motor skills in toddler age. Unexpectedly, the early appearance of Early Hand Control skills in infancy had a negative association with the development of the gross motor domain at 3.5 years (explanation ratio was 9%). No significant connections between early and later fine motor skills were found. The mediating role played by postural control is discussed.
Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 2009
This longitudinal study examined the predictive associations between cumulative multidomain risk ... more This longitudinal study examined the predictive associations between cumulative multidomain risk factors and cognitive (IQ), academic (reading fluency), and social adaptive outcomes at 8 to 9 years among 190 children with or without familial risk for dyslexia. Other risk factors included parental and neurocognitive risks assessed when the children were 1 to 6 years of age. Risks accumulated more among
Dyslexia, 2004
We review the main findings of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (JLD) which follows t... more We review the main findings of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (JLD) which follows the development of children at familial risk for dyslexia (N = 107) and their controls (N = 93). We will illustrate the development of these two groups of children at ages from birth to school entry in the skill domains that have been connected to reading and reading disability in the prior literature. At school entry, the highest score on the decoding task among the poorer half (median) of the at risk children--i.e. of those presumably being most likely genetically affected--is 1 SD below the mean of the control group. Thus, the familial risk for dyslexia shows expected consequences. Among the earliest measures in which group differences as well as significant predictive associations with the first steps in reading have emerged, are indices of speech processing in infancy. Likewise, various measures of early language including pronunciation accuracy, phonological, and morphological skills (but not performance IQ) show both group differences and predictive correlations, the majority of which become stronger as the reliability of the measures increases by age. Predictive relationships tend to be strong in general but higher in the at risk group because of its larger variance in both the predictor variables and in the dependent measures, such as early acquisition of reading. The results are thus promising in increasing our understanding needed for early identification and prevention of dyslexia.
Developmental Neuropsychology, 2001
Comparisons of the developmental pathways of the first 5 years of life for children with (N = 107... more Comparisons of the developmental pathways of the first 5 years of life for children with (N = 107) and without (N = 93) familial risk for dyslexia observed in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal study of Dyslexia are reviewed. The earliest differences between groups were found at the ages of a few days and at 6 months in brain event-related potential responses to speech sounds and in head-turn responses (at 6 months), conditioned to reflect categorical perception of speech stimuli. The development of vocalization and motor behavior, based on parental report of the time of reaching significant milestones, or the growth of vocabulary (using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories) failed to reveal differences before age 2. Similarly, no group differences were found in cognitive and language development assessed by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and the Reynell Developmental Language Scales before age 2.5. The earliest language measure that showed lower scores among the at-risk group was maximum sentence length at age 2. Early gross motor development had higher correlation to later language skills among the at-risk group rather than the control children. The most consistent predictor of differential development between groups was the onset of talking. Children who were identified as late talkers at age 2 were still delayed at the age 3.5 in most features of language-related skills-but only if they belonged to the group at familial risk for dyslexia. Several phonological and naming measures known to correlate with reading from preschool age differentiated the groups consistently from age 3.5. Our findings imply that a marked proportion of children at familial risk for dyslexia follow atypical neurodevelopmental paths. The signs listed previously comprise a pool of candidates for early predictors and precursors of dyslexia, which await validation.
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Papers by Helena Viholainen