Test of Gross Motor Development (TGMD)

The TGMD asks how well a child performs fundamental movement skills, not just whether they can perform them. A child who gets a ball across a room by throwing it awkwardly and one who throws with a mature pattern both succeed at the task, but only one is building toward the skills sport and playground games require.

Thirteen skills are observed across two subtests. Locomotor covers running, galloping, hopping, skipping, jumping, and sliding. Ball skills cover striking a stationary ball, dribbling, catching, kicking, and overhand and underhand throwing. Each skill has three to five specific performance criteria describing the mature pattern, scored 1 if present and 0 if not, across two trials.

• PRO-ED TGMD-3

Licensing Notes: Distributed through WPS and others. The current edition is the TGMD-3 (2019). Reproduction requires publisher permission.

Learn More: Diagnostic accuracy studies report a Gross Motor Index cutoff of 90 for cognitive impairment (sensitivity .71, specificity .91) and 85 for autism spectrum disorder(sensitivity .76, specificity .91). Scoring is process-oriented, which is the key point: each of the three to five criteria per skill describes one element of the mature movement pattern, so a child's score tells a therapist exactly which components are missing.