Reduced motor imagery efficiency is associated with online control difficulties in children with probable developmental coordination disorder.
Kids with DCD have slow online reach fixes because their motor imagery is weak—test imagery speed to guide motor plans.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Fuelscher et al. (2015) watched kids with probable developmental coordination disorder reach for a target.
The kids also did a quick motor-imagery test: how fast they could picture themselves making the same reach.
The team then asked, does poor mental rehearsal link with slow online corrections during the real reach?
What they found
Kids with DCD were slower to fix their reach mid-flight.
Their motor-imagery speed was also weaker.
Even after accounting for general reaching skill, imagery efficiency still predicted how fast they could adjust.
How this fits with other research
Debrabant et al. (2013) saw weaker brain activation when DCD kids timed early cues. Ian’s 2015 study adds that the trouble continues after the move starts.
Eussen et al. (2016) found children with cerebral palsy fail implicit imagery tasks yet pass explicit ones. Ian’s DCD group failed both, hinting the deficit is broader in DCD than in CP.
Krajenbrink et al. (2023) later showed DCD kids keep up in dual-task speed but feel more tired. Together the papers paint a picture: real-time control looks okay on the clock, yet hidden effort and poor internal models pile up.
Why it matters
If a child struggles to fix reaches mid-move, check motor imagery first. A quick imagery drill like “pretend to reach for the cup” can flag who needs extra support. Build in brief, explicit mental-practice trials before physical practice to sharpen that internal model and cut down on clumsy corrections.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Recent evidence indicates that the ability to correct reaching movements in response to unexpected target changes (i.e., online control) is reduced in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Recent computational modeling of human reaching suggests that these inefficiencies may result from difficulties generating and/or monitoring internal representations of movement. This study was the first to test this putative relationship empirically. We did so by investigating the degree to which the capacity to correct reaching mid-flight could be predicted by motor imagery (MI) proficiency in a sample of children with probable DCD (pDCD). Thirty-four children aged 8 to 12 years (17 children with pDCD and 17 age-matched controls) completed the hand rotation task, a well-validated measure of MI, and a double-step reaching task (DSRT), a protocol commonly adopted to infer one's capacity for correcting reaching online. As per previous research, children with pDCD demonstrated inefficiencies in their ability to generate internal action representations and correct their reaching online, demonstrated by inefficient hand rotation performance and slower correction to the reach trajectory following unexpected target perturbation during the DSRT compared to age-matched controls. Critically, hierarchical moderating regression demonstrated that even after general reaching ability was controlled for, MI efficiency was a significant predictor of reaching correction efficiency, a relationship that was constant across groups. Ours is the first study to provide direct pilot evidence in support of the view that a decreased capacity for online control of reaching typical of DCD may be associated with inefficiencies generating and/or using internal representations of action.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2015 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.07.027