Behavioral and Neuroimaging Research on Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD): A Combined Systematic Review and
Emily Subara-Zukic1, Michael H Cole1, Thomas B McGuckian1
1Healthy Brain and Mind Research Centre, School of Behavioural and Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Aim:
The neurocognitive basis of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD; or motor clumsiness) remains an issue of continued debate. This combined systematic review and meta-analysis provides a synthesis of recent experimental studies on the motor control, cognitive, and neural underpinnings of DCD.
Methods:
The review included all published work conducted since September 2016 and up to April 2021. One-hundred papers with a DCD-Control comparison were included, with 1,374 effect sizes entered into a multi-level meta-analysis.
Results:
The most profound deficits were shown in: voluntary gaze control during movement; cognitive-motor integration; practice-/context-dependent motor learning; internal modeling; more variable movement kinematics/kinetics; larger safety margins when locomoting, and atypical neural structure and function across sensori-motor and prefrontal regions.
Interpretation:
Taken together, these results on DCD suggest fundamental deficits in visual-motor mapping and cognitive-motor integration, and abnormal maturation of motor networks, but also areas of pragmatic compensation for motor control deficits. Implications for current theory, future research, and evidence-based practice are discussed.
Systematic Review Registration:
PROSPERO, identifier: CRD42020185444.
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