Differential changes in the development of motor coordination and executive functions in children with motor coordination impairments

ABSTRACT

Cognitive and motor coordination skills of children with and without motor coordination impairments were examined with a one-year follow-up investigation. Initially, children were between 4 and 6 years old. Age-appropriate tests of executive functions (updating, switching, inhibition, interference control), motor coordination (the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2) and fitness (the Körperkoordinations-Test für Kinder) were administered in two consecutive years. Several background variables (age, socioeconomic status, medical support, clinical interventions, leisure activities) and potential moderators (nonverbal intelligence, reaction time, visual perception) were controlled. The matched sample consisted of 48 control children and 48 children with motor coordination impairments. The children’s executive functions dramatically improved during the one-year period. With regard to motor coordination performance, half of the impaired children caught up to the control children’s level (“remission group”), while the remaining half showed no improvement (“persisting group”). Compared to the persisting group, the children in the remission group showed markedly better interference control at both measurement points. The correlation between executive functions and motor coordination is significant in the persisting group, but not in the remission group. The results of the study are discussed in the light of the role of executive functions, especially inhibition processes, for the automatization of motor coordination tasks.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental coordination disorder
• Motor coordination
• Executive functions
• Cognitive development
• Motor development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ This paper relies on the data of the first measurement point of the longitudinal study presented here.

² Because the children in this study were not fully diagnosed by a clinician but only tested with the M-ABC-2, the term “motor impairment” is used, rather than “DCD”.

³ All children completed the CFT subtest classification, which consists of 15 items. The task is to cross out one element within a row of five elements that is different from the others. The raw score represents the number of correctly answered items. For each child in the impairment group, a child of the same gender with a comparable subtest raw score (and a comparable age) was chosen. The mean subtest score was M = 5.94 (SD = 2.80) for the impairment group and M = 5.63 (SD = 2.39) for the control group.

⁴ 4 children in the remission group, 6 children in the persisting group, and 10 children in the control group were tested with the more difficult tasks from Age Band 2 of the M-ABC-2 because they were 7 years old at the second measurement point.

⁵ It was decided not to use Bonferroni correction because it is very conservative and because this is rather exploratory research.

⁶ Thanks are offered to an anonymous reviewer for these valuable suggestions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation [grant number MI 1717/1-1].