Pattern Recognition: Features of Motor Fitness of 9-Year-Old Schoolchildren

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to identify the gender-related features of motor fitness of 9-year-old schoolchildren. Materials and methods. The study involved 83 9-year-old schoolchildren (35 girls, 48 boys). The children and their parents were informed about all the features of the study and gave their consent to participate in the experiment. The study used the following research methods: analysis of scientific and methodological literature, pedagogical observations, testing of motor fitness, probabilistic approach to assessing the learning process, methods of mathematical statistics. In the experiment, the study controlled the level of proficiency in the following exercises: Rope climbing in 2 steps, Rope climbing in 3 steps, One leg swing upward circle. Results. In the girls and boys, the differences in the level of development of movement coordination between individual parts of the body and vestibular stability are not statistically significant. The 9-year-old boys have a statistically significantly higher level of development of strength, speed strength, speed, endurance, and a higher level of proficiency in gymnastic exercises and rope climbing than the girls. The obtained canonical function explains 100% of the variation of results and is informative for classifying 8-year-old schoolchildren’s motor fitness (r = 0.937). The analysis of the canonical function indicates its statistical significance (λ = 0.122; p = 0.001). Conclusions. The canonical discriminant function can be used to classify the gender-relatedfeatures of motor fitness of 9-year-old schoolchildren. The discriminant analysis revealed the indicators that have the greatest weight in assessing the gender-related features of motor fitness of 9-year-old schoolchildren. They include the level of relative strength of the shoulder flexors, speed strength, agility, and the level of proficiency in the One leg swing upward circle on a low bar.