Development of the pre‐school child: the validation of a psychomotor screen, and the influence of the home environment on psychomotor development

The present study was designed to validate and standardize a short psychomotor screening test on Australian four-year-old-preschool children and to assess their home environment using Caldwell's HOME Inventory. The Adelaide Psychomotor Screen (APS) is a short, 10-15 minute screening test which uses 13 separate items to assess "General" development, "Gross Motor" development, "Social/Emotional Behaviour" and "Speech". In the area of "General" development, 12 children screened as "abnormal" and 54 children screened as "normal" were further assessed by a psychologist on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. There was a high correlation between the APS "General" scores and the McCarthy (General Cognitive Index) scores (r = 0.75, p less than 0.001 for the younger children, and r = 0,90, p less than 0.001 for the older children). Caldwell's HOME Inventory takes an hour to complete, and involves a visit by the assessor to each home. The correlation between the HOME total scores and the McCarthy (General Cognitive Index) scores was r = 0.06, p less than 0.001. It is suggested that the HOME Inventory may be more valuable as a predictor of a child's future development than an index of his present developmental status. It is suggested that nurses and teachers used the APS as a screening test of the individual child, and use the HOME inventory as an assessment of the home environment.