Avoidance and coordination

Avoidant personality disorder is an extreme form of shyness characterised by marked social anxiety and an avoidance of social activities. Reduced childhood and adolescent athletic achievement is often remembered as a feature of shy people's childhoods. One explanation is that shyness stops children taking part in sports, however, it could also be the case that children with poor coordination withdraw from play situations in order to prevent failure and bad coordination in childhood has been associated with anxiety and withdrawal in adolescence. A third possibility is that both the poor coordination and the social anxiety are caused by a common neurological problem yet to be discovered. A study of 150 11-12 year-old children in Norway found that avoidant personality traits were associated with motor impairment and that children who fulfilled the criteria for avoidant personality disorder showed a significantly poorer motor performance than other children with half of them scoring in the bottom 5% of the population.

Kristensen, Hanne and Torgersen, Svenn - The association between avoidant personality traits and motor impairment in a population-based sample of 11-12-year-old children Journal of Personality Disorders 21(1), 87-97