Unimanual and bimanual motor performance in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) provide evidence for underlying motor control deficits

Abstract

Much of our understanding of motor control deficits in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) comes from upper limb assessments focusing on the dominant limb. Here, using two robotic behavioural tasks, we investigated motor control in both the dominant and non-dominant limbs of children with DCD. Twenty-six children with diagnosed DCD (20 males; mean age 10.6 years ± 1.3 years) and 155 controls were included in this cross-sectional study. Participants completed a visually guided reaching task with their dominant and non-dominant limbs and a bimanual object hitting task. Motor performance was quantified across nine parameters. We determined the number of children with DCD who fell outside of the typical performance range of the controls on these parameters and compared the DCD and control groups using ANCOVAs, accounting for age. Children with DCD demonstrated impairments in six out of nine parameters; deficits were more commonly noted in the non-dominant limb. Interestingly, when looking at individual performance, several children with DCD performed in the range of controls. These findings indicate that children with DCD display deficits in motor control in both the dominant and non-dominant limb and highlight the importance of including detailed assessments of both limbs when investigating children with DCD. They also demonstrate the variability in motor control performance evidenced by children with DCD.

Robotic Technologies in ADHD Care: Literature Review

“…The advent and advancement of robotics have enabled the development of tasks that humans cannot perform, or at least not with such precision [66][67][68]. In the field of eHealth, robotics has played a fundamental role in helping and treating people with various neurological conditions such as trauma [69], dementia [33][34][35][36][37], ASD [24][25][26][27][28], cerebral palsy [29][30][31][32] and ADHD [18][19][20][21][22][23]. Although in recent years the application of robotics in the treatment and support of ADHD has received considerable research attention, however, it is far inferior compared to dementia, autism, and cerebral palsy.…”

“…Motor control deficits in children with ADHD are known to come from the upper limb, specifically the dominant limb [99]. The study [22] used two robotic behavioral tasks to investigate motor control in the dominant and nondominant limbs of children with DCD. Twenty-six children with ADHD, learning disorder (LD), or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) were evaluated by a registered healthcare provider in 155 controls.…”

“…In recent years, non-pharmacological treatments, such as cognitive training, neurofeedback, and behavioral interventions, have gained prominence as they have been accepted by therapists as useful alternatives to avoid the use of medications in children, which in many cases can cause dependence [2,3]. Several nonpharmacological treatments to treat these NND have implemented technological developments such as the Internet of Things (IoT) [4][5][6], Artificial Intelligence (AI) [7][8][9][10], Virtual Reality (VR) [11][12][13][14], Augmented Reality (AR) [15][16][17], and Robotics [18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Motor deficits in autism differ from that of developmental coordination disorder

“…When considering voluntary movements, children with DCD appeared able to programme their movement accurately in easy end-state-comfort tasks, while they displayed difficulties in complex tasks (Adams et al, 2017; Noten et al, 2014; Smyth & Mason, 1997). In visually guided reaching tasks, their initial direction error has been found unaffected – attesting of preserved feedforward control, while the path length could be longer in children with DCD than in TD children – suggesting that they reached for a longer than necessary distance, which could highlight deficits in integrating visual information and online control (Grohs et al, 2021). Regarding the feedback control, children with DCD were found impaired in rapid online control (ROC) through double-step paradigms (Hyde & Wilson, 2011a, 2011b; but see Adams et al, 2017 for absence of ROC deficit).…”

Knee Joint Proprioceptive Acuity and Kinematic Control in Relation to Motor Competency in 13 to 14-Year-Old Adolescents

“…Common kinematic measures include movement trajectory, time, velocity, and normalized jerk [28][29][30]. Previous studies showed that DCD children performed with slower reaction times, larger endpoint errors, longer movement and/or deceleration times with more curved trajectories, and showed greater variability in movement speed compared to TD children in upper limb tasks [27,31]. Normalized jerk (NJ), which is often used to measure movement smoothness [30,32,33], was found in children with and without DCD to have the same developmental trajectory; however, when controlled for age, children with DCD exhibited greater NJ in upper limb movement [34].…”