Revealing hot executive function in children with motor coordination problems: What's the go?

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) often exhibit executive functioning (EF) deficits.
• Specifically, challenges with inhibitory control in emotionally charged ('hot') contexts are noted.
• Previous research indicates a need for optimized assessment of emotional sensitivity in DCD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To optimize the assessment of sensitivity to emotionally significant stimuli in children with DCD.
• To investigate inhibitory control deficits in children with DCD using an emotional go/no-go task.
• To explore the relationship between emotional stimuli and commission errors in DCD.

Main Methods:

• Employed an emotional go/no-go task with easily discriminable emotional facial expressions (neutral, happy, sad).
• Included 36 children aged 7-12 years, with 12 diagnosed with DCD.
• Administered the task with neutral faces paired with emotional expressions, varying 'go' and 'no-go' targets.

Main Results:

• No significant group differences were found in omission errors.
• The DCD group committed significantly more errors (commission errors) in response to happy 'no-go' faces.
• This performance pattern supports previous findings of 'hot' EF deficits in DCD.

Conclusions:

• The findings confirm deficits in inhibitory control within executive functioning for children with DCD.
• A potential underlying issue is disrupted coupling between cognitive control and emotion processing networks.
• Results have implications for theoretical models of DCD and inform intervention strategies.