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Assessing Child Postural Variability: Development, Feasibility, and Reliability of a Video Coding System
Laurel Daniels Abbruzzese1, Natasha Yamane2, Deborah Fein3
1Department of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, New York, USA.
Insights
A new coding method, Child Posture Variability Coding (CPVC), reliably quantifies postural changes in young children. This tool aids in assessing motor development and environmental exploration in children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Motor control research
- Clinical assessment tools
Background:
- Postural variability is crucial for children's motor development and exploration.
- Current methods for assessing postural variability lack standardization.
- Systematic assessment is needed for understanding locomotion and motor control in early childhood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and evaluate the feasibility and interrater reliability of the Child Posture Variability Coding (CPVC) method.
- To create a standardized tool for quantifying postural variability in young children.
- To assess the utility of CPVC in both typically developing children and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Main Methods:
- Development of 33 voluntary postural change codes (static and dynamic).
- Analysis of parent-child play interaction videos from a longitudinal study.
- Interrater reliability testing using three independent coders on 10 randomly selected videos (children aged 23-48 months).
Main Results:
- Child Posture Variability Coding (CPVC) demonstrated excellent interrater reliability (Krippendorff's > 0.90).
- Five specific codes (sit-half, sit-other, crawl, cruise, supported walk) were not observed in the sample but retained for developmental milestones.
- The method proved feasible for coding postural variability in naturalistic settings.
Conclusions:
- CPVC is a reliable and feasible method for quantifying postural variability in young children.
- The tool is applicable to children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders.
- CPVC supports systematic assessment of motor development in naturalistic contexts.
Aims:
Postural variability is central to children's locomotion, motor control, and environmental exploration, and lacks standardized methods for systematic assessment. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the feasibility and interrater reliability of Child Posture Variability Coding (CPVC), a method of quantifying postural variability in young children.
Method:
Videos of parent-child play interactions obtained from a longitudinal study investigating language acquisition in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were used to develop 33 codes for children's voluntary changes in static and dynamic postures. Interrater reliability was calculated for three raters who independently coded 10 randomly selected videos of children aged 23 to 48 months (TD: n = 5, median = 35, IQR = 12.5; ASD: n = 5, median = 35, IQR = 6.75).
Results:
Overall, CPVC demonstrated excellent interrater reliability (Krippendorff's > 0.90). Among all codes developed, five codes (i.e., sit-half, sit-other, crawl, cruise, and supported walk) were not observed by any coders in the sample, but were kept in the coding scheme to reflect normal developmental milestones.
Conclusions:
CPVC is a reliable, feasible method of quantifying postural variability in young children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders in naturalistic contexts.
