Elders, Vera, Sheehan, Sinead, Wilson, Andrew D., Levesley, Martin, Bhakta, Bipin and Mon-Williams, Mark. (2010) Head-torso-hand coordination in children with and without developmental coordination disorder. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, Vol.52 (No.3). pp. 238-243. ISSN 0012-1622

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Abstract

AIM This study investigated the nature of coordination and control problems in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD).

METHOD Seven adults (two males, five females, age range 20-28y; mean 23y, SD 2y 8mo) and eight children with DCD (sixmales, two females, age range 7-9y; mean 8y, SD 8mo), and 10 without DCD (seven males, three females, age range 7-9y; mean 8y, SD 7mo) sat in a swivel chair and looked at or pointed to targets. Optoelectronic apparatus recorded head, torso, and hand movements, and the spatial and temporal characteristics of the movements were computed.

RESULTS Head movement times were longer (p < 0.05) in children with DCD than in the comparison group, even in the looking task, suggesting that these children experience problems at the lowest level of coordination (the coupling of synergistic muscle groups within a single degree of freedom). Increasing the task demands with the pointing condition affected the performance of children with DCD to a much greater extent than the other groups, most noticeably in key feed-forward kinematic landmarks. Temporal coordination data indicated that all three groups attempted to produce similar movement patterns to each other, but that the children with DCD were much less successful than age-matched children in the comparison group.

INTERPRETATION Children with DCD have difficulty coordinating and controlling single degree-of-freedom movements; this problem makes more complex tasks disproportionately difficult for them. Quantitative analysis of kinematics provides key insights into the nature of the problems faced by children with DCD.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics
Divisions:	Faculty of Science > Psychology
Journal or Publication Title:	Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
ISSN:	0012-1622
Official Date:	March 2010
Volume:	Vol.52
Number:	No.3
Number of Pages:	6
Page Range:	pp. 238-243
Identification Number:	10.1111/j.1469-8749.2009.03347.x
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
Funder:	Wellcome Trust, Action Medical Research, SPARK award
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/6485

Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge

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