Assessing body sensations in children: Intra-rater reliability of assessment and effects of age

Abstract

Introduction: This article examines the effect of age and gender on somatosensory capacity for children and adolescents, and provides preliminary normative data and reliability for the SenScreen © Kids, a new standardised measure of touch, wrist position sense and haptic object recognition. Method: A cross-sectional study of 88 typically developing children aged 6–15 years (mean 10.3 years; SD 2.6 years) was used to determine the developmental effects of age and gender on somatosensory capacity. Intra-rater reliability was assessed in 22 of the 88 participants at two time points (mean 8.8 years; SD 2.6 years). Results: Statistically significant differences were observed between age groups fo..