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Published on: December 7, 2018
Visuo-motor attention during object interaction in children with developmental coordination disorder
Tom Arthur1, David J Harris1, Kate Allen2
1Department of Sport and Health Sciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK.
Insights
Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) showed typical hand-eye coordination during object lifting. However, exploratory analysis revealed differences in visual sampling and gaze behaviors in children with DCD.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Motor Control
Background:
- Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is characterized by impaired motor skills without intellectual deficits.
- Understanding visuomotor processes in DCD is crucial due to its prevalence.
- Previous research suggests individuals with DCD may interact with their environment less predictively.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate hand-eye coordination during manual tasks in children with DCD.
- To examine predictive visuomotor control by analyzing eye and hand movements.
- To explore differences in visual behavior between children with and without DCD.
Main Methods:
- Compared hand and eye movements during an object lifting task.
- Included 19 children with DCD and 39 age-matched controls.
- Analyzed the coordination between hand and eye movements and the lead of eye over hand.
Main Results:
- No significant differences were found in hand-eye coordination or eye-hand lead between children with and without DCD.
- Findings do not support the hypothesis of non-predictive visuomotor coordination in DCD.
- Exploratory analysis revealed atypical visual sampling strategies and gaze anchoring in the DCD group.
Conclusions:
- Children with DCD exhibit typical hand-eye coordination during object lifting.
- The proposed deficit in predictive visuomotor control was not supported by this study.
- Differences in visual behavior suggest potential atypical visual sampling strategies in DCD.
Abstract:
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) describes a condition of poor motor performance in the absence of intellectual impairment. Despite being one of the most prevalent developmental disorders, little is known about how fundamental visuomotor processes might function in this group. One prevalent idea is children with DCD interact with their environment in a less predictive fashion than typically developing children. A metric of prediction which has not been examined in this group is the degree to which the hands and eyes are coordinated when performing manual tasks. To this end, we examined hand and eye movements during an object lifting task in a group of children with DCD (n = 19) and an age-matched group of children without DCD (n = 39). We observed no differences between the groups in terms of how well they coordinated their hands and eyes when lifting objects, nor in terms of the degree by which the eye led the hand. We thus find no evidence to support the proposition that children with DCD coordinate their hands and eyes in a non-predictive fashion. In a follow-up exploratory analysis we did, however, note differences in fundamental patterns of eye movements between the groups, with children in the DCD group showing some evidence of atypical visual sampling strategies and gaze anchoring behaviours during the task.
