Development of motor planning for dexterity tasks in trisomy 21.
Kids with Down syndrome can find and stick with a row-by-row plan that speeds up peg and coin tasks if you let them work at their own pace.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Jover et al. (2014) watched kids with Down syndrome and typical kids do peg and coin tasks. They timed every move and noted the order kids placed the pieces. The goal was to see if children with T21 create their own plan to speed up the job.
The lab set-up was simple: a board with holes and a pile of pegs. Kids were told to fill the board as fast as they could. No extra cues were given.
What they found
Kids with Down syndrome took longer overall, but many hit on the same trick: work row by row, left-to-right. Once they used this line-wise plan, their time dropped. They kept the pattern on later trials without prompting.
Typical kids also used rows, but switched strategies faster. The big news is that the T21 group invented and stuck with the helpful order on their own.
How this fits with other research
Biancotto et al. (2011) saw the opposite in kids with DCD. Those children stayed slow and variable even after many tries. The difference: DCD involves motor noise, while T21 kids mainly need extra time to find a plan.
Matson et al. (2009) showed that even profound ID can produce smart force control when the task is steady. Marianne’s row strategy lines up with that idea—given a clear space, kids with T21 create a steady, repeatable rule.
Vinter et al. (2012) found that blind children draw better when they first explore a raised picture with neat, systematic hand paths. The T21 peg board story is the same story in a new modality: structured exploration boosts output.
Why it matters
You can stop spoon-feeding step-by-step directions for every fine-motor job. Instead, set up the workspace so a row-by-row or left-to-right path is obvious, then give wait time. Kids with Down syndrome will often discover and keep using that efficient plan, shaving minutes off task time and building pride in their own strategy. Try it next time you run peg boards, coin banks, or even token boards in skill acquisition sessions.
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Join Free →Arrange pegs or coins in a straight line beside the board and say, ‘Put them in any order you like.’ Time the trial and praise any left-to-right pattern you see.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
We examined the macroscopic aspects of motor planning in two manual dexterity tasks, comparing children, adolescents, and young adults with trisomy 21 (T21) with typically developing controls from a developmental perspective. We analyzed the order in which objects were picked up from a table during two manual tasks of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (M-ABC). Participants with T21 were always slower than controls. Task completion times depended on the strategy used by participants to gather up the pegs or coins. A structured strategy, in which the participants picked the items up moving methodically along each row/column, contributed to rapid task completion by younger children and participants with T21. This study highlights the ability of children with T21 to select and maintain an efficient strategy that takes account of their motor difficulties. Developmental trajectories help to explain T21 functioning in these dexterity tasks.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.03.042