The Influence of Perceptions of Competence on Motor Skills and Physical Activity in Middle Childhood: A Test of Mediation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The mediating effect of perceptions of physical competence (PPC) on the relationship between motor competence and physical activity levels is documented in adolescence. However, it is unclear at what age this begins. In this study, we examined whether PPC mediated the relationship between moderate-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) or sedentary behaviour and motor competence in middle childhood. The participants were 129 children (mean age = 8.3 years) from eight elementary schools. MVPA and sedentary behaviour were measured using Actigraph accelerometers, and motor competence was assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development, Second Edition. The Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children and The Self-Perception Profile for Children were used to assess PPC. In this study, PPC did not predict either MVPA or engagement in sedentary behaviours. Further, structural equation modelling revealed that PPC did not mediate the relationship between motor competence and MVPA or between motor competence and sedentary behaviour. These results suggest that at 8 years of age, children's perceptions do not influence their participation in physical activities. It is possible that factors influencing PPC, such as peer comparisons and performance outcomes, have more impact in later childhood or adolescence. In turn, those perceptions may affect children's or adolescents' choices to opt in or out of physical activities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".