Evaluation of Motor Skill Learning and Action Observation with Transfer by Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

Abstract

DSM-5 criteria describes that in order to emphasize the diagnosis for developmental coordination disorder (DCD) there should be marked deficits in performing motor coordination skills, there is a trouble with sequencing and executing the motor skills. Previous research studies explored that children and adults with developmental coordination disorder experiences difficulty in executing the motor skills but those studies doesn’t reveal the deficit in executing and learning a new skill. The aim of the current study is to compare the motor skill learning among 5-6 year old children with and without developmental coordination disorder and in the current study grapho-motor learning task which is similar to letter writing was incorporated. Twenty boys participated in the study, 10 with DCD, learned to fabricate and create new letter by connecting the three dots. Training the children with the specific new task and 1 week post training effects and retention were tested and the new letter formation ability with no-dot condition was also examined. The results of the current study conclude that children with DCD experiences difficulty in transfer of the learned task. There is a plateau phase were the learning effects were impaired. However the rate of learning is similar to children without developmental coordination disorder.  The study concludes by exploring the motor difficulties expressed by children with DCD and it also examine the underlying mechanism in skill learning.