Associations of gross and fine motor development with attentional stability and breadth in preschool children: Behavioral and fNIRS evidence

Motor development has been proposed as an important correlate of early cognitive development; however, its associations with attentional performance and related cortical activation remain incompletely understood in early childhood. This cross-sectional study examined associations between gross and fine motor development and attentional stability and breadth in 56 preschool children aged 3–6 years and characterized task-related cortical activation using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Motor development was assessed across five subscales, and attentional performance was evaluated using structured tasks of attentional stability and breadth. Overall motor development was positively associated with attentional stability ( r = 0.420, p = 0.001) and attentional breadth ( r = 0.678, p < 0.001). All motor-subscale correlations with the two attentional outcomes remained significant after false discovery rate (FDR) correction. After adjustment for age and sex, overall motor development remained associated with attentional stability ( β = 0.382, p = 0.034) and attentional breadth ( β = 0.739, p < 0.001). At the subscale level, several associations with attentional breadth survived FDR correction, whereas none with attentional stability did. fNIRS analyses identified significant task-related HbO changes in prefrontal, sensorimotor, and visual regions during both attention tasks; however, exploratory associations between motor development and cortical activation did not survive FDR correction. Overall, motor development was associated with performance on both attentional tasks, while the fNIRS findings characterized task-related cortical activation without evidence of reliable motor–brain associations. The cross-sectional design precludes causal inference.