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Updated: Jun 12, 2026
Event-related Potentials During Target-response Tasks to Study Cognitive Processes of Upper Limb Use in Children with Unilateral Cerebral Palsy
Published on: January 11, 2016
Manual ability and its relationship with daily activities in adolescents with cerebral palsy
Mirjam van Eck1, Annet J Dallmeijer, Ilse S van Lith
1Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, VU University Medical Center, 1007 MB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m.vaneck@vumc.nl
Objective:
To describe the manual ability of adolescents with cerebral palsy and to investigate the relationship of manual ability with daily activities.
Design:
Cross-sectional study.
Subjects:
Ninety-four adolescents with cerebral palsy, aged 12-16 years.
Methods:
Manual ability was assessed according to the Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) and the ABILHAND-Kids. Daily activities were assessed with the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS) sub-scales for (personal and domestic) daily living skills. The relationship between manual ability and daily activities was investigated with regression analysis: independent variables were manual ability, disease and personal characteristics.
Results:
MACS and ABILHAND-Kids were both strongly associated with personal daily activities (explained variance 77% and 84%, respectively) and less strongly with domestic daily activities (explained variance 45% and 62%, respectively). Including other disease characteristics and personal characteristics in the model increased the explained variance of personal daily activities to 91% for both models and the explained variance of domestic daily activities to 68% and 73% for the MACS and ABILHAND-Kids models, respectively.
Conclusion:
Manual ability is limited in many adolescents with cerebral palsy, and limitations in manual ability are strongly related to limitations in daily activities.
