The Early Motor Questionnaire revisited: Starting points, standardized scores, and stability

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Pediatrics
• Motor Development

Background:

• Infant motor skills are crucial predictors of overall development.
• Accurate and efficient assessment tools for infant motor skills are essential.
• The Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ) is a parent-report measure for infant motor skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To improve the Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ) for assessing infant motor skills.
• To enhance the EMQ's utility in examining variability, stability, and individual differences in early motor development.
• To create age-independent and interpretable scores for the EMQ.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a large sample of 775 parent responses for 446 infants.
• Employed regression analyses to generate age-independent scores (global, gross motor, fine motor, perception-action).
• Converted age-adjusted scores to t-scores and developed age-specific starting flags to reduce completion time.

Main Results:

• Developed age-independent scores for various motor domains assessed by the EMQ.
• Transformed scores into t-scores for enhanced interpretability across studies.
• Implemented starting flags to streamline the questionnaire completion process for parents.

Conclusions:

• The revised EMQ offers improved utility and interpretability for assessing infant motor development.
• These enhancements facilitate the examination of motor skill variability, stability, and individual differences.
• The updated EMQ is a valuable, free resource for researchers and clinicians.