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Timing and force control during a sequential tapping task in children with and without motor coordination problems
1Research Centre for Applied Psychology, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia. j.piek@psychology.curtin.edu.au
Insights
Clumsy children exhibit motor coordination deficits, taking longer to start finger tapping sequences. This study suggests peripheral impairments, not central timing issues, contribute to their timing difficulties.
Area of Science:
- Developmental neuroscience
- Motor control research
- Pediatric neurology
Background:
- Children with motor coordination problems, often termed 'clumsy children', display difficulties in executing precise movements.
- Previous research suggested central timing mechanisms, like the cerebellum, underlie motor timing deficits in these children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the planning and execution of sequential finger tapping between children with and without motor coordination problems.
- To investigate the underlying mechanisms contributing to timing deficits in clumsy children.
Main Methods:
- A sequential tapping task was administered to 15 children with motor coordination problems and 15 age-, sex-, and Verbal IQ-matched controls.
- Key metrics analyzed included reaction time, tap duration, inter-tap interval, and average force during tapping.
Main Results:
- Clumsy children demonstrated significantly longer reaction times to initiate movement sequences.
- These children also exhibited prolonged finger contact duration on the tap plate during sequence execution.
- No significant differences were observed in the time between taps or mean average force.
Conclusions:
- The findings suggest that impairments in peripheral motor processes, rather than central timing deficits, are more significant contributors to motor timing issues in clumsy children.
- This challenges previous hypotheses implicating cerebellar or central timing mechanisms as the primary cause.
Abstract:
In the present study a sequential tapping task was used to compare the planning and execution of finger tapping sequences in children with motor coordination problems (clumsy children) and control children. Fifteen children with significant movement problems were compared to 15 control children matched on age, sex, and Verbal IQ. The clumsy children took significantly longer to initiate the movement sequence (i.e., reaction time). During the execution of the sequence, the clumsy children left their finger on the tap plate for significantly longer for each tap than the control children. No significant differences were found between the groups for the time taken between the taps, or mean average force. Past research has indicated that the source of timing problems in clumsy children may lie in a central timing mechanism possibly the cerebellum, whereas the evidence from the present study indicates an impairment of the peripheral processes may be a more important contributor to timing deficits in clumsy children.