Does how I feel change how I move? The influence of anxiety, self-efficacy and resilience on movement in adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder.
For adults with DCD, movement consistency—not anxiety or confidence—predicts how they navigate gaps, so target motor regularity in treatment.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Harris et al. (2025) asked adults with and without DCD to walk through door-like gaps. They measured how steady the steps were and how well the walkers sized up each gap.
The team also gave quick surveys on anxiety, confidence, and resilience. They wanted to know if feelings drive movement choices.
What they found
Only one thing predicted safe passage: how consistent each adult's steps were. High or low anxiety did not matter.
Adults with DCD showed weaker links between what they saw and how they moved. Their steps were less steady, so gaps looked trickier.
How this fits with other research
Harris et al. (2021) surveyed the same topic and found adults with DCD report more anxiety and less confidence. The new lab study says those feelings do not change actual movement.
The papers do not clash. The 2021 work captured self-report; the 2025 work captured real steps. Feelings exist, but they do not drive motor choices.
Stanford et al. (2026) show anxiety scales are reliable in neurodivergent adults, so you can trust the scores. Yet Harris et al. (2025) remind us that scores alone do not forecast movement.
Why it matters
When you treat adults with DCD, focus on building steady, repeatable movement patterns instead of talking down anxiety. Add gait drills, rhythm cues, or light external pacing. Check step-to-step variability as a live progress measure. If the walking pattern smooths out, navigation safety rises even if worry levels stay the same.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Anxiety and movement consistency both influence movement in individuals with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). AIMS: This study investigated the influence of anxiety, self-efficacy, resilience and movement variability on perceptions and actions of adults with and without DCD. METHODS: 17 adults with DCD and 17 adults with typical motor skills (TMS) (age and sex-matched) completed a questionnaire and three experimental tasks: two perceptual judgement tasks (static and dynamic conditions), and an executed action task involving judging and walking through different-sized gaps between doors. RESULTS: No significant relationships were detected between general or movement-specific anxiety, self-efficacy or resilience and perceptual judgement or movement behaviour; however, movement consistency did significantly relate to movement execution in both groups. Correlations showed adults with DCD with lower movement-specific self-efficacy left bigger safety margins, and indicated stronger links between perception and action in TMS adults. In the adults with DCD there was no significant correlation between the point of behaviour change (critical ratio) in the perceptual judgement and executed action tasks, suggesting a less smoothly linked perception-action cycle than in the TMS adults. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Results highlight the importance of movement variability and motor control in the movement behaviour of adults with DCD, while illustrating the importance of studying perception and action together, especially when comparing populations, to elucidate how these may be constrained differently by individual-, task- and environmental-based constraints.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2025 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2025.104927