[Truncated astract] Talent Identification (TI) in sports begins by mass screening individuals' motor abilities. du Randt (2000) wrote that, as test items from one country might not necessarily suit another, appropriate basic motor skill test items are important for developing a TI mass screening instrument. Three hundred and thirty Malaysian adolescents aged from 12-15 years were tested on three motor skill test batteries: the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND, McCarron, 1982); the Australian Talent Identification Test (AIS, Australian Sports Commission, 1998); and a Balance and Movement Coordination Test which was specifically developed for this project. In the current research, the motor performance data recorded from the adolescents underwent several types of analyses. Principal Component analyses were conducted on the MAND, AIS and BMC motor skill instruments to understand what the three motor skill instruments were assessing globally in the Malaysian adolescents. Then, first-order and higher-order factor analyses were conducted on the 13 parameters making up the AIS+BMC motor skill instrument to examine the concept of general motor ability (GMA). After descriptive analyses of the adolescents' motor skill performances, age and gender differences were examined using two (gender) by four (age) ANOVAs. Finally, stepwise discriminant function analyses were conducted on a combined AIS+BMC motor skill instrument to determine the best sub-set of motor skills that reliably classified the Malaysian adolescents into three levels of motor performance.... Two stepwise discriminant analyses were undertaken to find the best set of motor skills for classifying Malaysian adolescents into three motor coordination groups based on scores on the MAND and three motor ability groups derived from scores on the motoric 'g'. The ability of a combined AIS+BMC motor skill instrument to classify Malaysian adolescents into the three groups was good for those classified as Normal, not so great for those adolescents classified as High, and poor for those adolescents classified as Low. The motor skills consistently reported across both sets of analyses were Balance-Eyes-Open, Balance-Eyes-Closed, Dynamic Balance, Hopping Speed, Quadrant Jump, Hopping-in-Square, Basketball Throw and Shuttle-Run-with-Object. Hence, motor skills assessing static balance, dynamic balance and postural control appeared to reliably discriminate the Malaysian adolescents into three motor performance groups. Finally, an examination of the misclassifications found in the discriminant analyses revealed two things. Those individuals being predicted into a lower group performed a large number of the motor skills to a lesser standard when compared with their correctly classified cohorts. Conversely, those predicted into a higher group performed a number of motor skills to a standard higher than their correctly classified cohorts. Thus, at a global level, certain individuals could be overlooked for further athletic development and is a concern when developing a rigorous TI program. Therefore, practitioners need to be cautious of any single ability score, and how that represents an individual's athletic potential. These results are discussed, limitations noted, and directions for future research provided.

Phenytoin is well-known antiepileptic drug with high anticonvulsant effect but also with proven side effects on motor activities associated with its long-term use. This thesis summarizes side effects of phenytoin on motor skills and coordination of rats after acute phenytoin treatment. Theoretical part includes proven effects of phenytoin on human and animal model. Knowledge about motor skills development of rats and comparison with human motor skills development is also included in the thesis. Apart from locomotion development, swimming development is also described. We compared three groups of rats in the experiment. Each group consisted of ten rats. We compared group with dosage 60 mg/kg, 30 mg/kg, control group and vehicle group. Each group was tested before application for control. We tested animals on postnatal day 12, 18 and 25. Effects of phenytoin were evaluated by motor skills testing and swimming analyses. The results of this thesis have proved impaired motor skills and coordination after phenytoin treatment of 12 and 25 days old rats.