The effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns on motor skill development of 6- and 7-year old children in the Netherlands: a longitudinal study

Abstract Background The closing of schools and sports clubs during the COVID-19 lockdown raised questions about the possible impact on children’s motor skill development. Therefore, we compared motor skill development over a one-year period among four different cohorts of primary school children of which two experienced no lockdowns during the study period (control cohorts) and two cohorts experienced one or two lockdowns during the study period (lockdown cohorts). Methods A total of 992 children from 9 primary schools in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) participated in this study (age 5 – 7; 47.5% boys, 52.5% girls). Their motor skill competence was assessed twice, first in grade 3 (T1) and thereafter in grade 4 (T2). Children in control group 1 and lockdown group 1 were assessed a third time after two years (T3). Motor skill competence was assessed using the 4-Skills Test, which includes 4 components of motor skill: jumping force (locomotion), jumping coordination (coordination), bouncing ball (object control) and standing still (stability). Mixed factorial ANOVA’s were used to analyse our data. Results No significant differences in motor skill development over the study period between the lockdown groups and control groups (p > 0.05) were found, but a difference was found between the two lockdown groups: lockdown group 2 developed significantly better than lockdown group 1 (p = 0.008). While socioeconomic status was an effect modifier, sex and motor ability did not modify the effects of the lockdowns. Conclusions The COVID-19 lockdowns in the Netherlands did not negatively affect motor skill development of young children in our study. Due to the complexity of the factors related to the pandemic lockdowns and the dynamic systems involved in motor skill development of children, caution must be taken with drawing general conclusions. Therefore, children’s motor skill development should be closely monitored in the upcoming years and attention should be paid to individual differences

Additional file 1 of The effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns on motor skill development of 6- and 7-year old children in the Netherlands: a longitudinal study

Additional file 1: Appendix Figure S1. The development of motor lead in years in boys and girls from T1 to T2 for the four different cohorts and from T1-T2-T3 for the two follow-up cohorts (control cohort 1, lockdown cohort 1). Two-year follow-up is done in only 7 schools, which accounts for the differences observed between the samples. Appendix Figure 2. The development of motor lead in years in the four motor ability groups (quartiles) from T1 to T2 for the four different cohorts and from T1-T2-T3 for the two follow-up cohorts (control cohort 1, lockdown cohort 1). Two-year follow-up is done in only 7 schools, which accounts for the differences observed between the samples. Appendix Table 1. Multiple Comparisons with Bonferroni correction between the four cohorts on the difference between motor lead on T1 and T2. Appendix Table 2. Analysis on the role of sex in the difference in motor lead (in years) development from T1 and T2 between the 4 cohorts. Appendix Table 3. Analysis on the role of SES in the difference in motor lead (in years) development from T1 and T2 between the 4 cohorts. Appendix Table 4. Analysis on the role of motor ability in the difference in motor lead (in years) development from T1 to T2 between the 4 cohorts. Appendix Table 5. Means and standard deviations of motor lead (in years) for T1, T2 and T3 in the two cohorts. Appendix Table 6. Analysis on the role of sex in the difference in motor lead (in years) development from T1 to T3 between the 2 cohorts. Appendix Table 7. Analysis on the role of motor ability in the difference in motor lead (in years) development from T1 to T3 between the 2 cohorts. Appendix Table 8. Analysis on the role of SES in the difference in motor lead (in years) development from T1 to T3 between the 2 cohorts

Competition and moral behavior: a meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs

Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity-variation in true effect sizes across various reasonable experimental research protocols. To provide further evidence on whether competition affects moral behavior and to examine whether the generalizability of a single experimental study is jeopardized by design heterogeneity, we invited independent research teams to contribute experimental designs to a crowd-sourced project. In a large-scale online data collection, 18,123 experimental participants were randomly allocated to 45 randomly selected experimental designs out of 95 submitted designs. We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis of the pooled data. The crowd-sourced design of our study allows for a clean identification and estimation of the variation in effect sizes above and beyond what could be expected due to sampling variance. We find substantial design heterogeneity-estimated to be about 1.6 times as large as the average standard error of effect size estimates of the 45 research designs-indicating that the informativeness and generalizability of results based on a single experimental design are limited. Drawing strong conclusions about the underlying hypotheses in the presence of substantive design heterogeneity requires moving toward much larger data collections on various experimental designs testing the same hypothesis.For financial support, we thank the Austrian National Bank (grant 17788 to M. Kirchler), Austrian Science Fund (grants SFB F6307 to A.D.; SFB F6309 to J.H.; and SFB F6310 to M. Kirchler), Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation (grant P21-0091 to A.D.), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (grant KAW 2018.0134 to A.D.), Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation (grant KAW 2019.0434; to A.D.), Radboud University Nijmegen (grant 2701437 to U.W.), and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (grant P21-0168 to M. Johannesson)

Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs

Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity—variation in true effect sizes across various reasonable experimental research protocols. To provide further evidence on whether competition affects moral behavior and to examine whether the generalizability of a single experimental study is jeopardized by design heterogeneity, we invited independent research teams to contribute experimental designs to a crowd-sourced project. In a large-scale online data collection, 18,123 experimental participants were randomly allocated to 45 randomly selected experimental designs out of 95 submitted designs. We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis of the pooled data. The crowd-sourced design of our study allows for a clean identification and estimation of the variation in effect sizes above and beyond what could be expected due to sampling variance. We find substantial design heterogeneity—estimated to be about 1.6 times as large as the average standard error of effect size estimates of the 45 research designs—indicating that the informativeness and generalizability of results based on a single experimental design are limited. Drawing strong conclusions about the underlying hypotheses in the presence of substantive design heterogeneity requires moving toward much larger data collections on various experimental designs testing the same hypothesis

Analysis of Outcomes in Ischemic vs Nonischemic Cardiomyopathy in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation A Report From the GARFIELD-AF Registry

IMPORTANCE Congestive heart failure (CHF) is commonly associated with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF), and their combination may affect treatment strategies and outcomes