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

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((c)) 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 for tactile discrimination, wrist position sense and haptic object recognition, but not for touch registration for which all except one participant achieved a maximum score. There was no effect of gender. Three of four SenScreen Kids subtests demonstrated good intra-rater agreement between time points. Conclusions Somatosensory capacity increased with age for typically developing children aged 6-15 years. Three subtests of the SenScreen Kids demonstrated good intra-rater reliability with typically developing children. Further investigation of reliability is required, and all subtests require psychometric testing with clinical populations.