Impact of task difficulty and motor ability on visual-motor task performance of children with and without developmental coordination disorder.
BACKGROUND
Given the well-acknowledged visual-motor difficulties of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), it is surprising to find few research studies systematically exploring their visual-motor task performance.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the impact of task difficulty and motor ability on visual-motor task performance in children with and without DCD.


METHODS
Twenty-four children (8years 11months to 12years 11months) were recruited: 12 children with DCD, 12 children developing typically with regards to their motor skills. A computer-based aiming task completed with three different cursor controls of increasing levels of difficulty was designed for this study. Mixed-effect modeling analyses were performed to describe the influence of motor ability and task difficulty on visual-motor task performance.


RESULTS
Motor ability modulated the impact of task difficulty on visual-motor task performance. Children with DCD were as fast and as accurate as their peers in their initial performance of the simple task. However, they were slower and less accurate when performing the complex and novel visual-motor task.


CONCLUSIONS
While children with DCD can generally be characterized as less accurate and slower than their peers, this characterization needs to be specified and qualified; it is probably best not applied to a well-learned, simple task.
Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science, University of Toronto, 500 University Av., Toronto, ON M5G 1V7, Canada. Electronic address: noemi.cantin@uqtr.ca.
Noémi
N
Cantin
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, 3560 Bathurst St, Toronto, ON M6A 2E1, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 250 College Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1R8, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry, University of Toronto, 250 College Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1R8, Canada.
Jennifer
J
Ryan
Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science, University of Toronto, 500 University Av., Toronto, ON M5G 1V7, Canada.
Helene J
HJ
Polatajko
D001076:Aptitude; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019957:Motor Skills Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011596:Psychomotor Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values
Aiming; Developmental coordination disorder; Eye–hand coordination; Movement time; Visual-motor performance