Use of the auditory clap task in physiotherapy developmental assessment

This study assessed the test-retest reliability of the auditory clapping task in normal children. This task forms part of the physiotherapy neurodevelopmental assessment for children over five years of age, and is an auditory sequential short term memory (STM) test which is not language biased. Trends associated with age, gender and type of rhythm were also examined in five, seven and nine year old children. Results suggest that this is a reliable test, with significant increase in STM performance demonstrated with increasing age. Girls performed significantly better than boys, and significantly longer rhythmic than non-rhythmic sequences were recalled.