<p class="title">Young children with better eye-to-hand co-ordination are more likely to achieve higher scores for reading, writing and maths, according to a study.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that schools should provide extra support to children who are clumsy.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The results show that eye-to-hand co-ordination and interceptive timing are robust predictors of how well young children will perform at school," said Mark Mon-Williams, a professor at the University of Leeds in the UK.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Over 300 children aged four to 11 took part in computer tasks to measure their co-ordination and interceptive timing - their ability to interact with a moving object.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The tasks designed to measure eye-to-hand coordination involved steering, taking aim and tracking objects on a computer screen.</p>.<p class="bodytext">In the 'interceptive timing' task, the children had to hit a moving object with an on-screen bat.</p>.<p class="bodytext">This task taps into a fundamental cognitive ability - how the brain predicts the movement of objects through time and space.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The researchers suggest that this skill may have provided the evolutionary foundations for the emergence of cognitive abilities related to mathematics, a theory first proposed by the famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1950s.</p>.<p class="bodytext">After controlling for age, the results revealed that the children who did better at the eye-to-hand coordination tasks tended to have higher academic attainment in reading, writing and maths.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Those with the best performance at the 'steering task' in particular were on average nine months ahead of classmates who struggled.</p>.<p class="bodytext">However, the researchers found that while the children's interceptive timing skills tended to predict their attainment in mathematics, it did not influence reading and writing development.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The study identifies the important relationship between a child's ability to physically interact with their environment and their cognitive development, those skills needed by the child to think about and understand the world around them," Mon-Williams said.</p>
<p class="title">Young children with better eye-to-hand co-ordination are more likely to achieve higher scores for reading, writing and maths, according to a study.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that schools should provide extra support to children who are clumsy.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The results show that eye-to-hand co-ordination and interceptive timing are robust predictors of how well young children will perform at school," said Mark Mon-Williams, a professor at the University of Leeds in the UK.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Over 300 children aged four to 11 took part in computer tasks to measure their co-ordination and interceptive timing - their ability to interact with a moving object.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The tasks designed to measure eye-to-hand coordination involved steering, taking aim and tracking objects on a computer screen.</p>.<p class="bodytext">In the 'interceptive timing' task, the children had to hit a moving object with an on-screen bat.</p>.<p class="bodytext">This task taps into a fundamental cognitive ability - how the brain predicts the movement of objects through time and space.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The researchers suggest that this skill may have provided the evolutionary foundations for the emergence of cognitive abilities related to mathematics, a theory first proposed by the famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1950s.</p>.<p class="bodytext">After controlling for age, the results revealed that the children who did better at the eye-to-hand coordination tasks tended to have higher academic attainment in reading, writing and maths.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Those with the best performance at the 'steering task' in particular were on average nine months ahead of classmates who struggled.</p>.<p class="bodytext">However, the researchers found that while the children's interceptive timing skills tended to predict their attainment in mathematics, it did not influence reading and writing development.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The study identifies the important relationship between a child's ability to physically interact with their environment and their cognitive development, those skills needed by the child to think about and understand the world around them," Mon-Williams said.</p>