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Proximal versus distal control in proprioceptively guided movements of motor-impaired children
H Sigmundsson1, H T Whiting, R P Ingvaldsen
1Human Movement Science Section, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. hermundurs@sv.ntnu.no
Insights
Motor-impaired children showed poorer performance in a visuomotor matching task compared to controls. This difference was primarily linked to specific hand impairments under different control conditions.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Motor Control
Background:
- Understanding motor development in children is crucial for identifying developmental lags or neurological issues.
- Visuomotor skills, the coordination of visual information with motor actions, are fundamental for daily activities.
- Children with motor impairments often exhibit difficulties in tasks requiring precise hand movements and spatial awareness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate visuomotor matching abilities in 7-year-old children with and without motor impairments.
- To analyze performance differences across proximal, distal, and combined control conditions.
- To explore potential explanations for observed motor deficits, considering developmental lag versus neurological deviancy.
Main Methods:
- Two groups of 7-year-old children (6 motor-impaired, 6 controls) performed a target-locating and matching task without visual feedback.
- The task involved intra-modal matching using one hand to locate a target and the other to match its position.
- Three conditions were tested: proximal control (P), distal control (D), and both (PD), with target distance errors analyzed.
Main Results:
- The motor-impaired group demonstrated significantly inferior performance (higher absolute error scores) and greater variability across all conditions when hand scores were combined.
- Separate hand analyses revealed that performance deficits were more pronounced with the right hand in proximal and combined conditions (P, PD).
- Deficits were also noted with the left hand specifically in the distal condition (D), indicating differential hand involvement.
Conclusions:
- Children with motor impairments exhibit significant visuomotor matching deficits compared to typically developing peers.
- The pattern of impairment suggests specific challenges related to processing proximal and distal spatial information, with differential hand involvement.
- Findings support further investigation into developmental lag and/or neurological deviancy as underlying causes for these motor control differences.
Abstract:
Two groups of 7-year-old children diagnosed as motor-impaired (N = 6) or as controls (N = 6) were required to perform a task that involved locating targets under a table-top with one hand while attempting to match the position of the target with the other, on the table-top (intra-modal matching), always without visual control. The experimental design involved three different conditions: proximal control (P), distal control (D) or both (PD). Target distance errors were analysed in terms of absolute (AE) and variable error. When the scores for each hand were combined, the motor-impaired group showed inferior mean performance (AE scores) on all three conditions as compared with the control children and were also more variable in their behaviour. Analyses of scores achieved with the right and the left hand separately, however, demonstrated that the difference could largely be attributed to the scores obtained when matching with the right hand in conditions P and PD, and matching with the left hand in condition D. Possible explanations of these findings are discussed in the context of 'delay' (developmental lag) and/or 'deviancy' (neurological lesion/disconnection).