Motor imagery is less efficient in adults with probable developmental coordination disorder: evidence from the hand rotation task.
Adults with probable DCD still show slow, inaccurate hand-rotation imagery, proving the internal action deficit persists and can be screened with a two-minute computer task.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hyde et al. (2014) asked adults with probable developmental coordination disorder to picture moving their hands. They used a simple computer task. A hand photo appeared on screen, rotated at odd angles.
The adults had to decide if each photo showed a right or left hand. They could rotate the image in their mind or move their own hand. The researchers timed their answers.
What they found
Adults with probable DCD took longer and made more errors than typical adults. Their mental rotation was slower and less accurate.
The results show that poor motor imagery lingers into adulthood for people with DCD. The trouble is not just in muscles, but in the brain's action blueprint.
How this fits with other research
Noten et al. (2014) saw the same pattern in kids. Children with DCD also struggled on palm-view rotations. The adult study extends the finding: the deficit does not fade with age.
Austin et al. (2015) pooled 31 studies and linked DCD to weak mirror-neuron activity. Christian's hand-rotation task fits that picture. Slow mental rotation may reflect a quiet mirror system.
Schertz et al. (2016) then showed the upside. After five weeks of imagery training, kids with DCD improved real motor skills as much as kids who got standard therapy. The deficit is measurable, but trainable.
Why it matters
If you assess teens or adults with coordination complaints, add a quick hand-rotation test. Slow, error-prone answers flag an internal action deficit that standard motor tests can miss. Use the result to justify imagery-based drills or compensatory strategies, not just strength or balance work.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study aimed to provide preliminary insight into the integrity of motor imagery (MI) in adults with probable developmental coordination disorder (pDCD). Based on a strong body of evidence indicating that paediatric samples of DCD often experience difficulties engaging MI, we hypothesised that young adults with pDCD would demonstrate similar difficulties. The performance of 12 young adults (19-35 years) with pDCD was compared to 47 age-matched controls on a traditional mental hand rotation task. Mean inverse efficiency scores were generated for each participant by dividing each participant's mean RT by their proportion of correct responses at each of the stimuli presentation conditions. Preliminary analysis revealed that the performance profiles of individuals with pDCD and age-matched controls showed evidence of being constrained by the biomechanical and postural constraints of real movement, suggesting that both groups engaged in an embodied (MI) strategy to complete the task. Despite engaging in a MI strategy, however, young adults with pDCD were nonetheless significantly less efficient when doing so, shown by significant main effects for group on all group efficiency comparisons. Based on the assumption that MI provides insight into the internal 'neural' action representation that precedes action, we argue that the less efficient MI performance demonstrated by young adults with pDCD may indicate inefficiencies engaging or implementing internal action representations. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.07.042