Relations among motor, social, and cognitive skills in pre-kindergarten children with developmental disabilities

• Fine motor skills predict improvements in preschoolers’ cognitive and social skills.
• Gross motor skills do not predict improvements in cognitive and social skills.
• Associations between motor, cognitive, and social skills differ by disability type.
• Fine motor skill predicts improvements in cognitive skills for specific learning disorder and intellectual disability.
• Motor skills do not predict cognitive or social skills for Autism Spectrum Disorder and speech/language impairment.

Despite the comorbidity between motor difficulties and certain disabilities, limited research has examined links between early motor, cognitive, and social skills in preschool-aged children with developmental disabilities. The present study examined the relative contributions of gross motor and fine motor skills to the prediction of improvements in children's cognitive and social skills among 2,027 pre-kindergarten children with developmental disabilities, including specific learning disorder, speech/language impairment, intellectual disability, and autism spectrum disorder. Results indicated that for pre-kindergarten children with developmental disabilities, fine motor skills, but not gross motor skills, were predictive of improvements in cognitive and social skills, even after controlling for demographic information and initial skill levels. Moreover, depending on the type of developmental disability, the pattern of prediction of gross motor and fine motor skills to improvements in children's cognitive and social skills differed. Implications are discussed.