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Background: The innate ability for typically developing children to attain developmental motor milestones early in life has been a thoroughly researched area of inquiry. Nonetheless, as children grow and are required to perform more complex motor skills in order to experience success in physical activity and sport pursuits, the range of developmental abilities becomes increasingly variable. What is less known in the literature is if physical education and sport programmes deliberately designed to facilitate the motor development of these underlying abilities can improve the efficiency of purposeful movements in children.

Purpose: To determine if the sensory-motor processing of lateral arm movements in children can be initiated quicker as a result of deliberate laterality practice.

Participants and setting: Forty-five children (boys = 23, girls = 22), between the ages of 8 and 11 years, randomly selected from several …