Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 21, 2026
Efficiently Recording the Eye-Hand Coordination to Incoordination Spectrum
Published on: March 21, 2019
Association between visual perceptual deficits and motor deficits in children with developmental coordination
Hilde Van Waelvelde1, Willy De Weerdt, Paul De Cock
1Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences, Belgium. hilde.vanwaelvelde@arteveldehs.be
Insights
Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) show deficits in visual perception and motor skills. Specific visual-perceptual abilities are linked to particular motor tasks, indicating a task-specific relationship.
Area of Science:
- Child Psychology
- Neurodevelopmental Disorders
- Motor Control
Background:
- Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting motor skill acquisition.
- Children with DCD often exhibit co-occurring deficits in visual-perceptual and visual-motor integration skills.
- Understanding these relationships is crucial for targeted interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between motor-free visual perceptual deficits, visual-motor integration deficits, and motor skills in children with DCD.
- To determine if specific visual-perceptual deficits are associated with particular motor skill impairments.
- To explore task-specific associations between visual-perceptual and motor performance.
Main Methods:
- A cohort of 36 children (aged 9-10) with DCD and 36 age- and sex-matched controls were recruited.
- Participants completed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC), a ball-catching test, a jumping test, a timed visual response task, and the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (including copying, visual discrimination, and tracing).
Main Results:
- Children with DCD demonstrated significantly poorer performance across all assessed motor and visual-perceptual measures compared to controls.
- Visual discrimination skills did not show significant correlations with any motor tasks.
- The visual timing task correlated with ball-catching, and the copying task correlated with MABC scores in the DCD group.
Conclusions:
- Children with DCD exhibit widespread deficits in visual-perceptual and motor domains.
- The association between visual-perceptual deficits and motor skills in DCD is not global but rather task-specific.
- These findings highlight the importance of assessing specific visual-perceptual skills in relation to motor challenges for tailored interventions.
Abstract:
This study explored the relation between a motor-free visual perceptual deficit, different visual-motor integration deficits, and different motor skills in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Thirty-six children (22 males), aged 9 or 10 years, with DCD and a control group (n=36), matched for age and sex, were assessed with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC), a ball-catching test, a jumping test, a timed response task to a visual moving stimulus, and the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, incorporating copying, visual discrimination, and tracing tasks. Children with DCD performed significantly worse than the control group on all measures. The visual discrimination task did not correlate significantly with any of the motor tasks. The visual timing task correlated significantly with the ball-catching test in the DCD group. The copying test was significantly correlated with the MABC in the DCD group. The association between visual-perceptual deficits and motor tasks was shown to be task specific.
