Mechanisms underlying fine motor eye -hand coordination in children with developmental coordination disorder

The purpose of this study was to examine potential mechanisms underlying fine-motor coordination by describing patterns of RT of children with DCD and a referent group of children. Since children with DCD have been shown to experience difficulty processing visual, auditory, and vibrotactile information, we explored patterns of choice RT in young (6--7 year-old) and older (9--10 year-old) children with and without DCD using different sensory modalities and a compatibility/incompatibility paradigm. This study supported spatiotemporal mapping as the best explanation for the RT results for all groups of children under visual, auditory, and vibrotactile conditions except for older children with DCD under the vibrotactile modality who responded in favor of anatomical mapping. The failure-to-inhibit theory was not supported. RTs under incompatible conditions were slower than compatible conditions for each sensory modality. There were no differences between errors and variability for children with and without DCD. The results of this study provide insight into the motor coordination difficulties of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder.