The role of affordances in developing children manipulative movement skills: an application of challenge point framework

The purpose of present study was to investigate predictions of challenge point theory (guadagnoli and lee, 2004) through comparing two group of challenging and nonchallenging games in developing manipulative fundamental movement skills. Thirty 4 to 6 years old child were selected from one of the kindergartens of Tehran and were grouped according to pretest scores. The games were used were designed for developing manipulative skills in both groups, however the task difficulty of these games was increased in challenging group while in nonchallenging group it was kept constant. The intervention was 8 weeks, 2 session for each week and 42 minutes for each session. Children's manipulative skills were assessed using Test of Gross Motor Development – second version in the beginning and the end of the intervention. The results of multivariate analysis of variance showed  that improvement groups in total score of manipulative skills and all subscales exept that catching wasn't significant. In total, if the challenge point theories predictions on developing of manipulative skills of healthy children failed to be proved but better improvement of challenging group in catching shows that this method is more effective in developing complex skills.