Abstract
The aim of this study was to identify the change in the manipulation of chopsticks to pick up food products which involved the feeding function using chopsticks in childhood. The subjects were 37young children ranging from 3 to 5 years of age; they were categorized into the 3 year-old group,4year-old group and 5 year-old group. The subjects were tasked to pick up the globate imitation food with chopsticks. The results showed that the 5 year-old group showed significantly higher percentage when they controlled the further chopstick than the closer chopstick. Furthermore, regarding to the direction in which subjects moved the chopsticks, no one moved the closer chopstick distally, and little tendency was indicated about the further chopstick in the 5 year-old group. The measurement of the number of executions to pick up the imitation food showed that the number of attempts decreased significantly the older the subjects were. Consequently, it was suggested that manipulation of the closer chopstick becomes stable earlier than the further chopstick; the function to pick up a food product matures as the child increases in age in childhood.
