Self-Regulatory Skill Among Children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder: An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT

Aim: Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) experience difficulty learning and performing everyday motor tasks due to poor motor coordination. Recent research applying a cognitive learning paradigm has argued that children with DCD have less effective cognitive and metacognitive skills with which to effectively acquire motor skills. However, there is currently limited research examining individual differences in children's use of self-regulatory and metacognitive skill during motor learning. This exploratory study aimed to compare the self-regulatory performance of children with and without DCD. Methods: Using a mixed methods approach, this study observed and compared the self-regulatory behavior of 15 children with and without DCD, aged between 7 and 9 years, during socially mediated motor practice. Observation was conducted using a quantitative coding scheme and qualitative analysis of video-recorded sessions. This paper will focus on the results of quantitative analysis, while data arising from the qualitative analysis will be used to support quantitative findings. Results: In general, findings indicate that children with DCD exhibit less independent and more ineffective self-regulatory skill during motor learning than their typically developing peers. In addition, children with DCD rely more heavily on external support for effective regulation and are more likely to exhibit negative patterns of motivational regulation. Conclusions: These findings provide further support for the notion that children with DCD experience difficulty effectively self-regulating motor learning. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS.:

• Metacognition
• motor learning
• developmental coordination disorder
• self-regulation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research presented in this paper was conducted during the first author's doctoral studies at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

FUNDING

The author acknowledges the financial support provided by the Cambridge Commonwealth Trusts in completing these studies.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Claire Sangster Jokić is an occupational therapist who conducted the research presented in this article as part of her doctoral studies at the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. She is currently lecturing in the Department of Occupational Therapy at the School of Allied Health Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia. David Whitebread is a developmental cognitive psychologist and Principal Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. He acted as supervisor to Dr. Sangster Jokić during her doctoral studies.

Notes

¹ In this and all other cases in which Mann–Whitney tests followed Kruskal–Wallis testing, a Bonferonni correction was applied and, as such, all statistical significance was reported and deemed significant at a 0.0125 level of significance.

² The observed difference between the DCD and DCD+ group is not statistically significant although it does appear to be significant in the graph.