Abstract

Introduction. One of the stages of a child’s motor development in the first year of life is crawling, whose positive influence on psychomotor development has been supported by research. However, some children skip this stage of locomotion and start to move immediately in a standing position. The aim of the study was to assess the motor and visual-motor coordination of children who did not crawl in infancy and to compare the results with a group of children who did not omit this stage of motor development.
Material and methods. The study involved 53 healthy children aged 4-7 years attending preschool facilities in Upper Silesia. The control group consisted of 20 children, who did not crawl in infancy. The control group consisted of 33 children who were crawling in infancy. The research consist: author’s questionnaire and Ozierecki’s Test of motor and visual-motor coordination. Questionnaire concern five parts of information about health, development, and current motor skills level of children. The second stage of the study – Ozierecki’s Test (interpreted by A. Barański) was used to assess the motor and visual-motor coordination level of 4-16 years old children.
Results. The group of crawling children had a higher level of visual-motor coordination, but only in one of the examined skills (swinging). The presence of crawling does not significantly affect the motor abilities of an older child. In the study group, it is noted that the higher the value of Apgar points obtained at birth, the higher the motor skills and motor coordination.

Key words:

crawling, motor coordination and visual-motor coordination