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Review
. 2023 Jun 2:11:1118674.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1118674. eCollection 2023.

Global hotspots and trends in research on preschool children's motor development from 2012 to 2022: a bibliometric analysis

Jun-Wei Wang  1   2 , Sha Qu  1 , Zhi-Cheng Zhu  2 , Xing Zhao  1 , Wen-Jing Song  1 , Xue Li  2 , Wan-Di Chen  3 , Dong-Mei Luo  1
Affiliations
Review

Global hotspots and trends in research on preschool children's motor development from 2012 to 2022: a bibliometric analysis

Jun-Wei Wang et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Motor development plays an important role in human development throughout the lifespans, from conception to death, and has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. However, valuable comprehensive reviews and literature analysis on this topic are still lacking. Here, this bibliometric study aimed to identify global motor development research hotspots and trends on preschool children's motor development from 2012 to 2022.

Methods: CiteSpace 6.1.R4 was used to visualize and analyze general bibliometric characteristics, research hotspots, and trends through a review of 2,583 articles on the motor development of preschool children, which were published from 2012 to 2022 and included in the Web of Science Core Collection.

Results: Research on motor development in preschool children has been carried out into a phase of rapid development. The top five frequently occurring keywords were physical activity (n = 489), performance (n = 319), intervention (n = 222), health (n = 196), and executive function (n = 165); The top five keywords in terms of centrality are academic achievement (0.22), low birth weight (0.16), association (0.14), brain (0.13), and cerebral palsy (0.13). Thirteen keyword clusters were produced from the log-likelihood ratio (Q = 0.74, S = 0.88), and five research topics has been received focused attention in recent years. The keywords with the strongest citation bursts in the last 5 years are developing country (S = 5.92), school-aged children (S = 5.86), middle-income country (S = 3.46), efficacy (S = 5.41), readiness (S = 3.21), motor proficiency (S = 3.6), and screen time (S = 3.3), indicating newly emerging research trends.

Conclusion: The results indicated that interventions involving fundamental movement skills, cognitive function, 24-h movement behaviors, neurodevelopmental disorders, and health-related fitness were hot topics in the field of motor development over the last decade. Emerging research trends generally center on school readiness, socioeconomic status, motor proficiency, and screen time.

Keywords: CiteSpace; bibliometrics analysis; motor development; preschool children; research hotspots; research trends.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Number of publications and frequency of citations. The number of annual publications and citations (A); the binomial fit curve of growth trends (B).
Figure 2
Figure 2
A dual-plot overlay mapping of journals showing disciplinary coupling.
Figure 3
Figure 3
A map of co-occurring keywords.
Figure 4
Figure 4
A map depicting keyword clusters.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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