Investigation of relationship between motor skills and executive function skills of preschool children

Children explore their surroundings and adapt to the world through movement. Motor development is the acquired movement proficiency influenced by individual characteristics and environmental factors. Recent studies show that activities carried out to develop children's motor skills support both their physical and cognitive development. One of the skills which acquired with cognitive development are executive functions are among the high-level cognitive skills. Purpose of the research; It is an examination of the relationship between preschool children's motor skills and executive functions. The research is a quantitative study, and the study group consists of 141 children between the ages of 60-72 months who continue to receive education in official kindergartens affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in the city center of Ankara. Beery-Buktenica Developmental Visual-Motor Coordination Test, Test of Gross Motor Development Test-2 (TGMD-2), The Childhood Executive Functioning Inventory (CHEXI) and family child form were used as data collection tools in the study. As a result of the research, a statistically significant but weak relationship was found between fine motor skills and executive function skills. The relationship between gross motor skills and executive function skills was found to be insignificant. While there was a positive correlation between motor skills and age, no relationship was found between executive function skills and age. Object control skills are more advanced in boys and inhibitory control skills are more advanced in girls.The other subtest scores did not show a statistically significant difference according to the gender variable.