Comportamento locomotor de crianças de dois a seis anos em ambiente complexo

The locomotor behavior of 25 children (from two to six years old) was observed during walking on an obstacle circuit under normal and reduced illumination. Participants were instructed to walk as fast as possible avoiding the contact with the obstacles. Two dependent variables were collected: success rate and time spent to complete the task. The two-way ANOVAs (5 age groups) x (2 illumination), with repeated measures on the last factor revealed only group main effect for success rate (F4,20= 9.975; p=0.001), lower for 2 years old children than for the other age groups; and for time spent to complete the task (F4,20=3.136; p=0.037), higher for 2 years old children than for 4 and 6 years old. Multiple regression analysis (stepwise) revealed that: chronological age, age group, walking experience, and time spent to complete the task predicted 75.3% of the success rate; and success rate was the only variable that predicted the spent time (R²=0.372; p=0.001). These results allowed us to conclude that developmental variables interfere on the locomotor behavior in an obstacle circuit and that illumination levels were not sufficient to disturb locomotion.