The purpose of this study was to examine the movement pattern during a rhythmic movement in preschool children focusing on the coordination of upper and lower extremities. Children were tasked to swing upper limbs with knee bending rhythmically, in three kinds of tempo: 120, 96 and 60bpm. For the analysis of the movement, the angular velocity of shoulder and knee were calculated from VTR images.
In mature pattern, the changing point of movement direction of upper extremities slightly preceded that of lower extremities. Peek velocity of the shoulder angle appeared at the moment of the deepest knee bending, which meant the moment of upward-changing. And irrespective of the tempo, the movement sequence did not change in adults movement. On the other hand, the movement patterns of children changed with tempo. Particularly, under the slow tempo, their movement patterns varied with those tempos. It was suggested that children had not programmed spatial-temporal patterns of their movement in advance.
The older children were superior to the younger, and girls to boys in the movement task.