Movement Assessment Battery for Children, 2nd Edition

The Movement ABC is one of the most frequently used tests of motor impairment in the world. It features in over 500 research studies internationally, and has been translated and standardised in several countries.

Use the Movement ABC-2 to:

• Identify children who are significantly behind their peers in motor development
• Assist in planning an intervention program in either a school or clinical setting
• Measure change as a result of intervention
• Serve as a measurement instrument in research involving motor development

New features and improvements

The Movement ABC-2 contains a full set of new norms; an extended age range; improved scoring; more task-age overlap; reduced room preparation time; new extensively trialled tasks; colourful robust equipment developed within health and safety guidelines and research addressing colours to use with visually impaired children; a shortened checklist; and a separate intervention manual.

The Movement ABC-2

The Movement ABC-2 contains 8 tasks for each age range in three areas: Manual Dexterity, Ball Skills and Static and Dynamic Balance. Total standard scores and percentiles are provided. A profile of a child’s performance over the different sections of the test can be examined.

The assessment is paralleled by an observational approach with item-specific observations designed to help the examiner focus on the perceptual-motor aspects and overall evaluation to pinpoint emotional and motivational difficulties the child may have in relation to motor tasks.

Checklist

The Movement ABC-2 Checklist is ideal for use by classroom and special education teachers to screen children’s motor performance either individually or in groups. This will allow early identification of children with motor difficulties and facilitate appropriate referral to allied health services. It can also be used by therapists to obtain the views of parents or teachers on a child’s movement in everyday settings; complementing the information obtained from using the test.

Items are divided into two sections, each of which considers the child’s performance in progressively more complex situations. In addition, the behaviour section of the checklist, identical to that contained in the test, considers the extent to which a child’s attitudes and feelings about motor tasks are situation-specific or generalised. Percentile cut scores categorise the child’s performance via an easy to use ‘traffic light’ system that indicates whether further action is needed.

Intervention Manual

The Movement ABC-2 Intervention Manual provides a complete guide to helping children with movement difficulties, based on research. Beginning with a description of the theoretical basis of the ecological approach, the practitioner is guided through a discussion of organisational issues at one end of the process to a detailed step by step guide on how to teach an individual child a new skill.