Prospective control abilities during visuo-manual tracking in children with 22q11.2 Deletion syndrome compared to age- and IQ-matched controls.
Kids with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome move their hands too late for moving targets even when IQ is matched, so give them slower, predictable motor tasks and extra visual cues.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Van Aken et al. (2010) asked kids to keep a stylus on a moving dot on a screen. The dot sped up and slowed down without warning. The team tested eight- to eleven-year-olds with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. They paired each child with a control kid of the same age and IQ.
The goal was to see if the syndrome adds a fresh motor problem on top of low IQ.
What they found
Kids with 22q11.2DS lagged behind the dot more often and never caught up as well as controls. Even after IQ was matched, the syndrome group still showed weaker prospective control. The gap was large enough to call it a syndrome-specific hit, not just low intelligence.
How this fits with other research
van Roon et al. (2010) ran the same dot-tracking task with kids who have learning disorders. They saw the same poor tracking and no trial-to-trial learning. Together the two papers show the task picks up motor-planning problems across diagnoses.
Duijff et al. (2012) looked at younger five-year-olds with 22q11.2DS. They found visual-perception, not hand skill, drove low scores. Katrijn’s older kids still had motor trouble even after vision was enough to see the dot. The deficit seems to shift from seeing to doing as kids age.
Petrovic et al. (2016) reviewed the whole cognitive map of 22q11.2DS. They list visuo-motor and executive gaps as early red flags for later psychosis. Katrijn’s tracking data now sit inside that bigger risk picture.
Why it matters
If you work with 22q11.2DS, expect smooth hand-eye skills to lag behind mental age. Break fine-motor tasks into short, predictable steps and give live visual feedback. Use the tracking game as a quick screener; poor scores can signal who needs extra practice or an OT referral before academics suffer.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
To examine whether children with a 22q11.2 Deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) are able to use prospective control, 21 children with 22q11.2DS (mean age=9.6+/-1.9; mean FSIQ=73.05+/-10.2) and 21 control children (mean age=9.6+/-1.9; mean FSIQ=73.38+/-12.0) were asked to perform a visuo-manual tracking task in which they had to track a cursor rhythmically between 2 target zones. Children with 22q11.2DS performed worse than the age- and IQ-matched controls (higher absolute time and distance errors) suggesting that the 22q11.2DS group experiences an additional (syndrome specific) processing deficit that cannot be attributed to their lower intellectual abilities. The 22q11.2DS group neither the control group improved their tracking performance throughout five identical full feedback conditions of the tracking task possibly due to a slow visuo-motor adaptation process, a short span of attention and cognitive flexibility impairments. The results showed that both the 22q11.2DS group and the controls had difficulties anticipating the movement of the target (prospective control) and thus are assumed to rely more on feedback instead of on an internal representation of the movement.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2010 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2010.01.002