Visuomotor adaptation in children with developmental coordination disorder

Although one of the criteria for the diagnosis of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) suggests learning impairments, there is a lack of studies investigating motor adaptation in these children. This study examined the ability of 7 children with DCD to adapt to a novel visuomotor relationship by exposing them to a 45 degrees visual feedback rotation while they performed a center-out drawing task, and compared their performance with that of 7 normally developing children. The results show that the children with DCD were less affected by the feedback distortion than the control children, and did not show aftereffects, suggesting they had a less well-defined internal model. A principal component analysis of the performance variables during early and late exposure showed that the variables accounting for most of the variance in the trajectories are different between the 2 groups, suggesting that underlying control processes might operate differently in the 2 groups of children.