Original researchGender and age affect balance performance in primary school-aged children
Introduction
Balance is the ability to stabilise the body in order to maintain posture during both static and dynamic situations.1 The process of balance relies on integrating information from the visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems in order to elicit appropriate muscular responses to produce postural adjustments so that the body's centre of gravity is maintained over its base of support.2 The ability to maintain postural stability is an essential pre-requisite to competently perform most activities of daily living, and important for proficient performance of fundamental movement skills. The most significant transitions in motor development occur in the first decade of life with balance control usually established between the ages of 7–10 years.3, 4 For children, proficiency in postural control develops not only as they increase in age but also from interacting with their environment and through fine tuning of muscular torques during growth and development.3, 5 However, if the ability to balance is not mastered in the early years of life, it can potentially reduce the efficiency of performing more complicated movement skills, such as running and jumping, and may increase the likelihood of a child sustaining an injury during sports participation.6, 7
Despite the importance of balance in the development of fundamental movement skills, very few studies have investigated postural stability in otherwise healthy children. Postural stability has been investigated in various adult populations, such as athletes,8 healthy adults,9, 10 adults with pathologies1, 11, 12 and the elderly,13, 14, 15 traditionally examined by spatial measures of the centre of pressure.16 However, of the limited studies examining balance in children, many of these studies have focussed on children with pathologies,4, 17, 18 or have been restricted to the use of a laboratory-based force platform to measure balance or postural stability.16, 19 Field-based methods to measure balance and postural stability are particularly important when assessing children to allow this to occur in more authentic and accessible community venues such as schools. Despite this, few studies have examined both static and dynamic balance in healthy children using field-based assessments, or have reported only fair-to-moderate reliability for a system (Balance Master)20 not easily available to community/clinical settings. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the static and dynamic postural stability of primary school-aged children and to determine whether this was moderated by age and/or gender. It was hypothesised that gender differences may exist due to earlier maturation of the neurological, visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems in girls and that postural stability would improve with age.21 Determining these gender and age differences in postural stability is important for many practical fields such as physical education and youth sport.
Section snippets
Methods
Thirty-seven boys (age = 9.5 ± 1.1 y; height = 1.38 ± 0.1 m; mass = 34.1 ± 10.2 kg) and 47 girls (age = 9.7 ± 1.0 y; height 1.39 ± 0.1 m; mass = 37.7 ± 9.8 kg) without known pathologies were recruited from three consenting primary schools in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. All recruiting and testing procedures were approved by the University of Wollongong Human Research Ethics Committee (HE02/238) and all parents gave written informed consent for their child and/or children to participate in the study.
Results
The mean distance traversed by the sway-meter during the 30 s test period for each of the three static balance conditions for the boys and girls are displayed in Fig. 1. The boys displayed greater sway than the girls for all static balance conditions, although only the postural sway recorded during single limb stance was significantly different between groups (p = 0.04). The boys also made more errors (14 ± 9 errors) on the coordinated stability task than the girls (12 ± 7 errors), although this
Discussion
Relative to the postural sway scores reported for older individuals using the sway-meter, the 8-year-old children performed poorer during the feet apart condition in comparison to hostel residents aged over 59 years (112–121 mm15, 23), and community-dwelling women aged over 65 years (80 ± 47 mm24). However, the children in the other age-groups had similar scores to these older subject cohorts. No study could be located that had conducted the feet together or single limb stance tests using the
Conclusion
In conclusion, static postural stability in primary school-aged children was found to be affected by gender and age, whereby boys displayed greater postural sway than girls and balance performance improved with age. It appears that proficiency in dual limb balance tasks may be obtained by the time children are around 9 years of age; although a more difficult single limb balance task appears to be more competently performed by children aged over 10 years of age.
Practical implications
- •
The sway-meter is a suitable tool to determine static and dynamic postural stability of children in their school environment. This study provides a basis for normative postural stability data for healthy boys and girls aged between 8 and 12 years.
- •
Gender should be considered when measuring postural sway in primary school aged children. Boys have greater postural sway than girls.
- •
Age should be considered when measuring postural sway in primary school aged children. Balance slowly improves until 10
Disclosures
This work was not supported by any external funding source.
Acknowledgement
Thanks are extended to Sally Davidson for her extensive contribution to data collection.
References (29)
- et al.
Correlations between force plate measures for assessment of balance
Clin Biomech
(2000) - et al.
Analysis of postural synergies during quiet standing in healthy children and children cerebral palsy
Clin Biomech
(2002) - et al.
The influence of footwear on timed balance scores of the modified clinical test of sensory interaction and balance
Arch Phys Med Rehabil
(2004) - et al.
Amplitude and frequency analysis of force plate data in sitting children with and without MMC
Clin Biomech
(2000) - et al.
Gait and postural stability in obese and nonobese prepubertal boys
Arch Phys Med Rehabil
(2000) - et al.
The evolution of foot morphology in children between 6 and 17 years of age: a cross-sectional study based on footprints in a Mediterranean population
J Foot Ankle Surg
(2005) - et al.
Optimizing the involvement and performance of children with physical impairments in movement activities
Pediatr Exerc Sci
(1992) - et al.
Development of lower extremity kinetics for balance control in infants and young children
J Mot Behav
(2001) - et al.
Gender differences in fundamental movement patterns, motor performances, and strength measurements of prepubertal children
Pediatr Exerc Sci
(1995) - et al.
Balance as a predictor of ankle injuries in high school basketball players
Clin J Sport Med
(2000)
Intrinsic risk factors for inversion ankle sprains in females—a prospective study
Scand J Med Sci Sports
The reliability of balance tests performed on the kinesthetic ability trainer (KAT 2000)
Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc
Athletic footwear affects balance in men
Br J Sports Med
Shoe sole thickness and hardness influence balance in older men
J Am Geriatr Soc
Cited by (92)
Multisensory and biomechanical influences on postural control in children
2024, Journal of Experimental Child PsychologyPostural control in adolescent boys and girls before the age of peak height velocity: Effects of task difficulty
2022, Gait and PostureCitation Excerpt :Sensory systems develop earlier in adolescent girls [6,7], as evidenced from a better use of visual feedback for postural control below the age of 10 [6,10]. Similarly, 10–12 year old girls exhibit less sway than boys with two leg stance [6] and this difference become more evident in more difficult balance task (one leg stance) [7]. The sex differences in adolescence during single leg balance tasks has been attributed to the girl’s lower body weight [8], environmental influences [1], or to a more mature sensory system [1].
Multisensory postural control in adults: Variation in visual, haptic, and proprioceptive inputs
2021, Human Movement ScienceCitation Excerpt :Finally, proprioceptive input, in the form of varying stance widths, influenced posture, with wider bases of support (e.g., shoulder width stance) producing increased stability relative to narrower bases of support (e.g., tandem stance). This finding both converges with earlier work on this topic (Chang, Wu, Hung, & Chiu, 2009; Day et al., 1993; Izquierdo-Herrera et al., 2018; Mickle et al., 2011; Yu et al., 2013), and extends these earlier findings by testing a wider range of stances then previous research. Given the general convergence of results between the current study and previous literature, it is reasonable to ask, and thus important to highlight, exactly what is novel in this work.
Does basketball training increase balance scores in children?
2024, Pedagogy of Physical Culture and SportsImpact of Height-to-Mass Ratio on Physical Fitness of German Third-Grade Children
2024, Research Square