Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 19, 2026
Event-related Potentials During Target-response Tasks to Study Cognitive Processes of Upper Limb Use in Children with Unilateral Cerebral Palsy
Published on: January 11, 2016
Perception-action coupling in children with and without DCD: Frequency locking between task-relevant auditory signals
J Whitall1, N Getchell, S McMenamin
1University of Maryland-Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Insights
Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) struggle with perception-action coupling during gross-motor tasks. Their coordination and control are significantly impaired compared to typically developing peers and adults.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience and Motor Control
- Developmental Psychology
- Human Movement Science
Background:
- Examines perception-action coupling, the relationship between perceptual and motor processes.
- Investigates differences in sensorimotor coupling between children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), typically developing (TD) children, and adults.
- Focuses on a gross-motor coordination task (clapping while marching) with a sensory signal.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if perception-action coupling differs among children with DCD, TD children, and adults.
- To analyze coordination and control in a gross-motor task under varying auditory beat frequencies.
- To assess the impact of DCD on sensorimotor integration during a rhythmic task.
Main Methods:
- Participants: 10 children with DCD, 8 TD children, 10 adults.
- Task: Clapping and marching to auditory beats at 0.8, 1.2, 1.6, and 2.0 Hz.
- Analysis: Relative timing measures (MRP, VRP) using 3x4x2 ANOVAs; qualitative assessment of absolute coupling.
Main Results:
- Significant differences in mean relative phase (MRP) were found across groups, with adults differing from both child groups.
- Variability of relative phase (VRP) showed significant group differences and a group-by-frequency interaction, with DCD children differing from TD and adult groups.
- Adults and TD children increasingly adopted absolute coupling with higher frequencies, while DCD participants showed decreased adoption.
Conclusions:
- Children with DCD exhibit difficulties in coordinating and controlling perception-action coupling during the studied gross-motor task.
- The findings highlight specific sensorimotor integration challenges in DCD that are exacerbated by increasing task frequency.
- Results underscore the impact of DCD on the dynamic interplay between sensory input and motor output.
Background:
The current research examines the relationship between perceptual and motor processes, known as perception-action or sensorimotor coupling, and the potential differences in perception-action coupling among children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and adults in a gross-motor co-ordination task (clapping while marching) when a task-relevant driving sensory signal is present.
Methods:
Ten children with DCD (7.32 + 0.23 years), eight typically developing (TD) children who were age-, gender- and racially/ethnically matched (6.91 + 0.24 years) and 10 college-aged adults were participants in this study. Participants clapped and marched to an auditory beat at four different frequencies: 0.8, 1.2,1.6 and 2.0 Hz. The relative timing measures of mean relative phase (MRP) and variability of relative phase (VRP) were calculated and compared using 3 (group) x 4 (frequency) x 2 (limb) anovas. Qualitatively, participants were assessed for the presence of absolute coupling (100% + 15% MRP).
Results:
Statistically significant differences in MRP occurred for coupling, frequency and group, and post hoc analysis indicated that the adult group differed from both the DCD and TD groups, who did not differ from each other. In VRP, there were significant main effects for coupling and group, and a significant interaction between group and frequency, with post hoc analysis indicating the DCD group to be different from the TD and adult groups. Qualitatively, both the adult and TD groups increased in the number of participants who adopt absolute coupling as frequency increases. In contrast, the DCD participants adopt this absolute coupling far less frequently overall; in fact, the number of participants adopting this pattern decreases as frequency increases.
Conclusions:
These results indicate that children with DCD have difficulties with both the co-ordination and the control of their perception-action coupling for this particular task.
