Motor performance and sensory processing behaviors among children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders compared to children with developmental coordination disorders.

Hen-Herbst et al. (2020) compared two groups of children: kids with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) and kids with developmental coordination disorders (DCD). They gave both groups the same motor test and the same caregiver sensory checklist (SPM). The goal was to see which scores, motor or sensory, could tell the groups apart.

Motor scores were almost identical between the two groups. The big difference showed up in sensory processing. Caregivers of children with FASD rated them much higher on trouble with vision, touch, body awareness, and planning. Those four SPM sub-scales cleanly split FASD from DCD.

Aller et al. (2023) used the same SPM tool and also found that sensory scores, not motor scores, separate disability groups. They added Down syndrome and mental-age-matched autism to the mix, extending the idea across more diagnoses.

Stichter et al. (2009) did a similar comparison earlier. They saw that sensory scores flagged autism or ADHD from typical kids, but could not split autism from ADHD. The pattern is the same: sensory data differentiate, motor data do not.

Austin et al. (2015) looked only at DCD and found that poor touch sense predicted sloppy handwriting. That study links one sensory slice (touch) to one motor task, while Liat et al. show full sensory profiles can flag a different diagnosis entirely.

If you have a child with clumsy movements, do not rely on motor tests alone to choose between FASD and DCD labels. Add the SPM caregiver form and focus on the visual, touch, body awareness, and planning sub-scales. High scores there point toward FASD and will guide your next assessment steps. This one extra form takes ten minutes and can save months of wrong referrals.