Development of motor imagery ability in children with developmental coordination disorder – A goal‐directed pointing task

Abstract

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have difficulties with the predictive control of movements. This was shown in studies that target motor imagery and motor planning, and appears to become particularly evident with increases in task complexity. In this study, we used a complex mental chronometry paradigm to examine the development of motor imagery ability in children with DCD, using a longitudinal design. Thirty children were included in the DCD group (aged 6-11 years) and age- and gender-matched to 30 controls. The DCD group had a Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 score ≤16th percentile and the control group ≥25th percentile. Results of this study showed that children with DCD indeed had a significantly lower correlation between executed and imagined movements. Importantly, the increase in the correlation and linear fit during subsequent measurements was comparable for the DCD and control group. Together, these findings suggest a delayed developmental onset of motor imagery ability in DCD, but a similar rate of development over time compared to the control group. Based on these results, it seems likely that explicit motor imagery instructions can be used to improve predictive control in children with DCD.

Behavioral and Neuroimaging Research on Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD): A Combined Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Recent Findings

“…Motor Imagery, Action Observation, Imitation, and Gesture Production Both implicit and explicit MI were investigated in seven studies (six of high quality, and one moderate), with a moderate overall effect (d = 0.61, 95% CI [0.35, 0.88]) (Adams et al, 2017a(Adams et al, ,b, 2018Kashuk et al, 2017;Fuchs and Cacola, 2018;Hyde et al, 2018;Scott et al, 2019). The combined ESs are presented in Figure 6.…”

Effect of Motor Imagery Training on Motor Learning in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The development of MI ability has been extensively studied in children without impairments [ 42 , 50 ]. More recently, a few studies on MI ability in children with motor deficits such as development coordination disorder (DCD) [ 51 , 52 , 53 ] or cerebral palsy (CP) have been conducted [ 54 ]. DCD is a neurodevelopmental condition that is characterized by the inability to acquire and execute well-coordinated movements at an age-appropriate level [ 55 ], reflected by slow, effortful, inaccurate and ill-coordinated movements [ 56 , 57 ].…”

Combined action observation and motor imagery facilitates visuomotor adaptation in children with developmental coordination disorder

“…Mental simulation techniques like motor imagery and action observation (i.e., the structured observation of action execution) have been proposed to be effective interventions that target internal model deficits (Adams, Lust & Steenbergen, 2018). These interventions have shown promise in improving movement outcomes in sporting tasks (Cumming & Ramsey, 2009) and for clinical conditions like Parkinson's disease (Caligiore, Mustile, Spalletta, & Baldassarre, 2017), stroke (Ertelt & Binkofski, 2012;Zimmermann-Schlatter, Schuster, Puhan, Siekierka, & Steurer, 2009) and for children with cerebral palsy (Buccino et al 2018).…”

“…These interventions have shown promise in improving movement outcomes in sporting tasks (Cumming & Ramsey, 2009) and for clinical conditions like Parkinson's disease (Caligiore, Mustile, Spalletta, & Baldassarre, 2017), stroke (Ertelt & Binkofski, 2012;Zimmermann-Schlatter, Schuster, Puhan, Siekierka, & Steurer, 2009) and for children with cerebral palsy (Buccino et al 2018). It has also been suggested that mental simulation techniques may be beneficial for children with DCD (Adams et al, 2018) and a small number of studies have reported positive outcomes. For example, Wilson, Thomas and Maruff (2002) found that motor imagery training was equally as effective as traditional perceptual motor training for developing motor skills, particularly with children with severe DCD (Wilson, Adams, Caeyenberghs, Thomas, Smits-Engelsman & Steenbergen, 2016).…”