Sequencing, timing, and rate relationships between language and motor skill in children with receptive language delay

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Abstract
This study used simple and multiple regression to examine the relation between auditory comprehension of language, fine motor skill, phoneme perception, and mental age in children between the ages of 4 and 7 years 9 months with receptive language delay. Participants were assessed using the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language‐Revised (TACL‐R), the fine motor components of the Bruininks‐Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, a test of phoneme perception, and the Goodenough‐Harris Draw‐A‐Man Test. The subsets of the motor test made different demands of the child for speed, precise timing, and repetitive sequencing, whereas subsets of the TACL‐R varied length of processing and linguistic demands. The pattern of results showed that performance declined on both language and fine motor tasks as the requirements for rapid timing and repetitive sequencing increased, suggesting that some aspects of timing may be shared by both language and fine motor skill. The test of phoneme perception, but not mental age, was moderately correlated with TACL‐R.