Young children with Developmental Coordination Disorder have difficulties estimating reach space with tools

Michael Romero, Melvin Ibana, and Dr. Priscila Caçola Developmental Motor Cognition Lab, Department of Kinesiology,

The University of Texas at Arlington

INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE

• Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) have low motor skills that include marked delays in achieving motor milestones, poor balance, low coordination and handwriting difficulties.

• Children with DCD often have difficulties with planning and generating a precise visuospatial representation of intended actions, however; little is known about their accuracy when planning motor actions with tools that extend reach space (Maruff et al.,1999)

• In Typically Developing (TD) children, research suggests that accuracy for hand and tool reach estimations are similar as early as 6 years of age (Cacola & Gabbard, 2012).

• The purpose of this study was to compare accuracy of TD and DCD children for reach estimations with their hand and tools of 20 and 40cm in length.

• All DCD children had at least average intelligence and scored below the 15th percentile for motor skills.

• The experiments involved reach estimation from a first-person perspective in peripersonal (near) and extrapersonal (far) space.

• Experiment 1 - Hand & Tool (20cm)

• 21 Trials with Hand + 7 trials with the Tool (Switch-Block, SB)

• 21 Trials with the Tool + 7 trials with the Hand (Switch-Block, SB)

• Experiment 2 - Hand & Tool (40cm)

• 21 Trials with Hand + 7 trials with the Tool (Switch Block, SB)

• 21 Trials with the Tool + 7 trials with the Hand (Switch-Block, SB)

METHODS RESULTS

CONCLUSION

• Experiment 2:

• DCD children were significantly less accurate in all conditions (all ps < .05)

• Overall, the results hint that: (1) young children with DCD have difficulties incorporating space with a tool to reflect accurate estimations; and (2) tool length influences estimations and accuracy when switching conditions.

• Further studies are necessary to explore the integration of hand and tool spaces in order to improve accuracy in motor skills that requires use of tools, in both physical (i.e., tennis racquet) and virtual (i.e., Wii) actions.

Developmental Motor Cognition

Lab - UTA

RESULTS

• Experiment 1:

• Significant difference between TD/DCD children was approached with Tool (p = .06)

• DCD were significantly less accurate with SB -extension condition( p < .05)

• No significant difference with Hand and SB - Retraction

Hand Tool SB-Extension SB-Retraction0%

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METHODS

• 10 participants (6 males, 4 females), all 7-year-olds, 5 DCD and 5 TD. All TD children were age and gender-matched.

• DCD diagnosis involved parent referral and testing with the Kaufmann Brief Intelligence Test – 2nd ed. (KBIT-2) and the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC-2).

Figure 1. Accuracy across conditions for Experiment 1. DCD children were significantly less accurate with the extension of Hand to Tool.

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Figure 2. Accuracy across conditions for Experiment 2. DCD children were significantly less accurate in all conditions.

Hand Tool SB-Extension SB-Retraction0%

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