Motor skill performance of school-age children with visual impairments

This thesis focuses on the motor skill performance of school-age children with visual impairments (VI). Children with VI are at risk of poor motor skill performance, as vision guides and controls the acquisition, differentiation, and automatization of motor skills. Yet though the presence or absence of vision is often seen as the explanatory variable for the motor skill performance of children with VI, within this population of children there seems clear variation in motor skill performance. The question remains, then, what is the nature and cause of this variation? It was this variation that was the rationale for our study. The purpose of the research described in this thesis was threefold: 1. To investigate whether and to what degree school-age children with VI experience motor problems; 2. To examine whether motor skill performance is task-specific; 3. To investigate which variables are related to the motor skill performance of children