Electronic Device Use and Fine Motor Dexterity & Handwriting: A Pilot Study of South African Grade 2 Children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Electronic media is at an all-time high in contemporary society with the developmental impact of electronic use still mostly unknown. This study aimed at determining the association between electronic device use and the impact on handwriting and dexterity in grade two children. Thirty four children aged between 7.2 to 8.1 years participated in a pilot study. A parental self-administered questionnaire was used to determine type and frequency of electronic usage, the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment measured six handwriting domains and the Nine-Hole-Peg-Test measured dexterity. Statistically significant correlations were computed for device use and handwriting score (r = 0.110) and device use and non-dominant hand dexterity (r = 0.137). Male children’s handwriting speed was superior (p < 0.015) and female children’s form of handwriting emerged as superior (p < 0.005). This study provides data on the potential impact of frequent device use on the overall fine motor development.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".