Effects of a Sport Stacking Intervention on
Hand-Eye Coordination, Reaction Time and
Handwriting Skills of 2nd Grade Students
University of Memphis
Lyndsie Stephens, Yuhua Li, Diane Coleman, Mary
Ransdell, Carol Irwin and Vince Grindle
Purpose
To examine the effects of a 14-week
sport stacking intervention on selected
psychomotor skills and handwriting
of 2nd grade students
Current Study
• Investigate the effects a sport stacking
intervention has on 2nd grade students’ handeye coordination, reaction time and
handwriting skills.
• Hypothesized that both the experimental
group and control group would improve,
however, the experimental group would
improve to a significantly greater extent than
the control group.
Methods
• Subjects
– 2nd Grade Physical Education Students (N=83)
• Control Group: N=41 (22 Males, 19 Females)
• Experimental Group: N=42 (25 Males, 17 Females)
– Average Age: 7.65 ± .55 years old
– Parent/Guardian IRB Approved Consent Form
• Asked the parents to not purchase or allow their child
to play with sport stacking cups throughout the
duration of the study.
Design & Procedure
Randomly assigned subjects to a control or an
experimental group for each of the three classes to
eliminate classroom teacher effect.
• 14-week intervention:
–
–
–
–
Sport Stacking sessions
Controlled physical education sessions
15-minutes per session
5 days per week
• Pre- and Post-Test
Experimental Group - Sport Stacking
– Instructed by an experienced physical education teacher
and assisted by the classroom teachers
– Involved learning and practicing various sport stacking
activities
• 3-Stack, 6-Stack – Upstacking and Downstacking, Both Hands &
One Handed Stacking, Group Competitions, etc.
Control Group – Physical Activities
– Supervised by Graduate Assistants
– Students participated in regular physical activities such as
jumping rope, pedometers and four-square games.
1. Grooved Pegboard Test
• Procedure:
– Pick-up a 1-inch metal peg with a ridge along the side at
one end
– Rotate it 180° or more so that it lines up properly with the
hole in the board
• Dominant Hand Only
– Determined by their writing hand
• One Practice Trial – fill up two rows with pegs
• Two Timed Test Trial
#1) LONG TRIAL: fill up first four rows
#2) SHORT TRIAL: fill up first two rows
2. Reaction Time
• Computer-based visual stimulus reaction time test is a
common measurement of central processing speed.
–
–
–
–
Computer Keyboard
Press a key in response to a visual stimulus
Index & Middle Fingers of both hands: D, F, J. K
One-Choice, Two-Choice, Four-Choice Trials
• Practice Trials – All Three Choice RT conditions
• Test: 10 Trials / Choice
• Measured by computer program to nearest MS
– Errors are not recorded
– Average of each section
3. Handwriting
• 3 Sentence Passage – subjects were instructed to
copy the passage word for word as quickly and neatly
as possible.
– Flesch-Kincaid 2.4 Reading Level
• Score
– Speed
– Letter Formation
• Testing took place in the classroom at the subjects’
desk.
4. Teacher Evaluation
Before and after the intervention, the three classroom teachers were
asked to fill out a questionnaire (below) for each individual student:
1) Following Directions
2) Listening Attentively
3) Completing Assignments
4) Returning Homework
5) Participating in Class
6) Exercising Self-Control
7) Working Independently
8) Exhibiting Reading Skills
9) Developing Penmanship
10) Applying Spelling Skills
11) Mastering Math Facts
12) Overall Academic Performance
13) Overall Conduct
Rating Scale
Excellent – 5; Above Average – 4; Satisfactory – 3; Needs Improvement – 2; Unsatisfactory – 1
Results
Grooved Pegboard Test
• Test Effect for Both Groups:
– Long Trial: F (1, 81) = 21.2, p < .01
– Short Trial: F (1, 81) = 11.63, p < .05
– Suggesting that all subjects improved the performances in
the post-test.
• No Group Differences
• No Significant Interaction
Reaction Time
• Test Effect for Both Groups
– Simple RT, 2-choice RT , 4-choice RT
• No Group Differences
• In 2-Choice RT
• Experimental group had greater improvement in the
post-test compared to control group – however, not
enough to be significant, p > .05.
Handwriting
• Test Effect for Both Groups
– Speed: F (1, 81) = 19.1, p < .01
• Greater improvement in the experimental group in the
post-test compared to control: F (1, 81) = 3.1, p = .08 (a
marginal interaction)
• Experimental Group (improved 84 s in average)
• Control Group (improved only 36 s)
Teacher Evaluation
• #3) Completing assignments:
– Marginal interaction between group and test, F (1, 91) =
3.32, p = .07.
– The experiment group improved .2 as an average, but the
control group decreased by .1 in rating score during the
post test.
• #5) Class Participation:
– Marginal interaction between group and test, F (1, 91) =
2.95, p = .089.
– Suggesting that experimental group had higher score in
the post-intervention, but the control group had no such
an improvement.
Discussion
• Hand-Eye Coordination
– Results did not support the hypothesis that sport
stacking would positively influence manual
dexterity.
– It was inconsistent with previous research
(Udermann et al. 2004) that found hand-eye
coordination was significantly improved following
a sport stacking intervention.
– Task differences may be the reason for the
conflicting results.
• Reaction Time
– The results did not support the hypothesis that sport
stacking would have a positive influence on reaction
time.
– It was inconsistent with past research (Udermann et
al. 2004) that found significant improvements in
reaction time following a sport stacking intervention.
• Intensity -30 min. of sport stacking each day for 5-weeks
• 2-Choice Reaction Time
– Results showed a tendency towards significant
group effects.
– Consistent with previous study (Liggins et al. 2007)
that found a significant interaction with the twochoice reaction time test.
– May suggest that the second grade subjects were
capable of improving reaction time at the middle
level of task difficulty, but not the low or high level
of task difficulty.
• Handwriting
– First study to examine the influence of sport
stacking on an academic performance.
– Results of the handwriting performances followed
the patterns of the motor skill tests:
• Both groups improved speed and letter
formation post intervention.
• The experimental group did show a tendency
towards significantly more improvements than
the control group with handwriting speed.
• Handwriting
– The non-significant findings may be related to the
methods used during the handwriting testing:
• Subjects were instructed to quickly and neatly copy the
passage.
• Some subjects may have been too intent on writing
quickly and therefore did not produce the quality of
letter formation they would normally use.
• On the other hand, some subjects who paid more
attention to letter formation quality and wrote slowly,
may have been distracted by the other students who
completed the task first.
• Teacher Evaluation
– The experimental group showed the tendency
that they had greater improvements in
assignment completion and class participation
post intervention according to the homeroom
teachers.
– A consistent pattern has been observed that the
positive influence of speed stacking intervention
might be extended to children’s classroom
behavior.
Conclusion
• The current study extended previous research that
examined the effects of sport stacking on motor
skills, and introduced the possibility of influence on
handwriting skills and classroom behavior.
• Results were not conclusive.
– No support for the hypothesis based on the primary data;
– However, a tendency toward significant improvements in
the experimental group versus the control group was
observed in handwriting skill and classroom behavior.