Motor Skills and Executive Function in Autism

Learn about emerging research on the relationship between the development of motor skills and executive function in autistic children. Free certificates of participation are available upon successful completion of a brief knowledge quiz at https://autism.org/motor-cognitive-de... Megan MacDonald, PhD is a professor of kinesiology, the early childhood research core director at the Hallie E. Ford Center for Children and Families and the OSU IMPACT for Life faculty scholar – all housed within the College of Health. Her vision is that every child is active and accepted. Megan McClelland, PhD, is the Katherine E. Smith Professor of Healthy Children and Families at Oregon State University (OSU) where she serves as Endowed Director at the Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families. Her research focuses on optimizing children’s development, especially as it relates to children’s self-regulation, early learning, and school success. Her recent work has examined links between self-regulation and long-term outcomes from early childhood to adulthood, recent advances in measuring self-regulation, and intervention efforts to improve these skills in young children. She works with colleagues and collaborators around the world and is currently involved with a number of national and international projects to develop measures of self-regulation and improve school success in young children. In this webinar: 2:45 – Presentation overview 3:20 – Executive function 6:25 – Motor Skills 9:20 – Motor skills and autism 13:30 – Motor skill development 19:00 – Executive function and motor skills 22:20 – Cultural contexts 28:13 – Conclusions 30:20 – Q&A