Associations Between Relative Age, Siblings, and Motor Competence in Children and Adolescents
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Motor competence is a key determinant of children’s physical, cognitive, and social development, and it is influenced by various biological and environmental factors. Among these, relative age and the presence of siblings have been proposed as potential contributors, yet their impact remains underexplored, especially in school-aged populations. Objective: This study investigates the influence of relative age and the effects of the presence of siblings on the motor competence of children and adolescents. Methods: The motor competence level of 747 students, 381 from primary school (mean age = 8.81 ± 1.8 years) and 366 from secondary school (mean age = 13.52 ± 1.22 years), was measured by the means of the Canadian Agility and Movement Skill Assessment. Participants were queried about their birth date and whether they had any older siblings. Results: Overall, motor competence exhibited an upward trend with chronological age, reaching its peak among children aged 14 years old. Analysis revealed a significant impact of relative age effects on motor competence among primary children, with considerably higher scores in the first semester (p = 0.017). Conversely, no clear trend was observed for secondary children. Having siblings did not significantly affect motor competence proficiency. Multiple regression analysis further confirmed that relative age did not contribute to this lack of association (quarter of birth: p = 0.003; β = −0.144; siblings: p = 0.697; β = −0.019). Conclusions: These findings suggest that physical education teachers should be aware of the influence of relative age not only when assessing motor competence but also when designing and implementing their teaching practice in primary school settings. In contrast, the effect of relative age appears to be less significant in secondary education, where it may be less relevant for both evaluation and teaching practice. Further research should explore longitudinal designs and consider additional psychosocial and environmental variables to better understand how these factors influence motor competence development over time.
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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 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".