title: Developmental Coordination Disorder Affects the Processing of Action-Related Verbs.
abstract: Processing action-language affects the planning and execution of motor acts, which suggests that the motor system might be involved in action-language understanding. However, this claim is hotly debated. For the first time, we compared the processing of action-verbs in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), a disease that specifically affects the motor system, with children with a typical development (TD). We administered two versions of a go/no-go task in which verbs expressing either hand, foot or abstract actions were presented. We found that only when the semantic content of a verb has to be retrieved, TD children showed an increase in reaction times if the verb involved the same effector used to give the response. In contrast, DCD patients did not show any difference between verb categories irrespective of the task. These findings suggest that the pathological functioning of the motor system in individuals with DCD also affects language processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Histology, Forensic Medicine and Orthopedics, University of Rome "Sapienza"Rome, Italy; IRCCS Neuromed HospitalPozzilli, Italy.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mirabella
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and Neuropsichiatry of Children and Adolescents, University of Rome "Sapienza" Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Del Signore
authors.affiliation: School of Innovation Sciences, Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven Netherlands.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lakens
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and Neuropsichiatry of Children and Adolescents, University of Rome "Sapienza"Rome, Italy; IRCCS Children Hospital Bambino GesùRome, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Averna
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and Neuropsichiatry of Children and Adolescents, University of Rome "Sapienza" Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Penge
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and Neuropsichiatry of Children and Adolescents, University of Rome "Sapienza" Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Flavia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Capozzi
keywords: action language; arm reaching movement; developmental coordination disorder; embodied theory of language; semantics