Motor Adaptation Deficits in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder and/or Reading Disorder.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Motor Control

Background:

• Procedural learning in neurodevelopmental disorders is often assessed via motor sequence tasks.
• Motor adaptation studies in these populations are less common and yield conflicting results.
• Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and Reading Disorder (RD) are key areas of focus.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare graphomotor adaptation performance in children with isolated and associated DCD and RD.
• To investigate motor adaptation differences between children with Reading Disorder (RD), Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), and combined DCD-RD, compared to typically developing (TD) children.

Main Methods:

• A graphomotor task involving writing trigrams in conventional (left-to-right) and opposite (right-to-left) directions.
• Participants included children with isolated RD, isolated DCD, combined DCD-RD, and typically developing (TD) children.
• Analysis focused on movement speed and accuracy under different adaptation conditions.

Main Results:

• Children with neurodevelopmental disorders exhibited greater impairment in movement speed and accuracy during adaptation compared to TD children.
• Children with RD showed fewer adaptation difficulties than children with DCD.
• Children with DCD-RD experienced the most significant difficulties, suggesting a cumulative effect of both disorders on motor adaptation.

Conclusions:

• Motor adaptation is significantly affected in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, especially those with combined DCD and RD.
• Reading Disorder (RD) appears to have a less detrimental impact on motor adaptation than Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD).
• The findings highlight a cumulative deficit in motor adaptation for children with co-occurring DCD and RD.