Visuomotor adaptation in children with developmental coordination disorder.
Although one of the criteria for the diagnosis of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) suggests learning impairments, there is a lack of studies investigating motor adaptation in these children. This study examined the ability of 7 children with DCD to adapt to a novel visuomotor relationship by exposing them to a 45 degrees visual feedback rotation while they performed a center-out drawing task, and compared their performance with that of 7 normally developing children. The results show that the children with DCD were less affected by the feedback distortion than the control children, and did not show aftereffects, suggesting they had a less well-defined internal model. A principal component analysis of the performance variables during early and late exposure showed that the variables accounting for most of the variance in the trajectories are different between the 2 groups, suggesting that underlying control processes might operate differently in the 2 groups of children.
Kagerer
Florian A
FA
Dept of Kinesiology and Neuroscience, Cognitive Science Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-2611, USA.
Bo
Jin
J
Contreras-Vidal
Jose L
JL
Clark
Jane E
JE
D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019957:Motor Skills Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*