The effects of visual impairment on motor imagery in children and adolescents.
Kids with visual impairment struggle to picture body moves, so teach them to image the move before they do it.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Schott et al. (2021) asked the kids with visual impairment and 30 sighted peers to picture simple hand moves.
The kids closed their eyes and told the researchers how they would wave, point, or twist their wrist.
All children were 8-12 years old and had no other diagnoses.
What they found
Kids with visual impairment gave fuzzy, slow, or wrong pictures of their own hand moves.
Sighted kids pictured the moves quickly and clearly.
The gap shows that lack of vision weakens the inner body map needed for smooth motor planning.
How this fits with other research
Whitehouse et al. (2013) already showed that blind children score far below peers on real gross-motor skills like running and catching.
Nadja’s team now shows the problem starts earlier: the kids can’t even picture the move before they try it.
Vinter et al. (2018) found that practice helps blind kids draw better pictures; the same may hold for motor imagery training.
Together the three papers form a ladder: poor body picture → poor real move → but practice can help.
Why it matters
If a child can’t picture the action, coaching “run like this” won’t land. Add short body-mapping games before gross-motor drills. Ask the kid to describe or show the move in their mind first, then practice it. Five extra minutes of imagery work may save weeks of slow motor progress.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: While the development of motor imagery (MI) has been extensively studied in sighted children, it is not clear how children with different severities of visual impairment (VI) represent motor actions by using the motor representations constructed through the remaining intact senses, especially touch. AIMS: Mental chronometry and generation/manipulation of MI were examined in children with and without VI. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Participants included 64 youth with and without VI (33 without visual impairments, 14 moderate-to-severe, and 17 blind). Mental chronometry was assessed with the imagined Timed-Up-and-Go-Test (iTUG), and generation/manipulation of MI with the Controllability-of-Motor-Imagery-Test (CMI). In addition, the effect of working memory performance (Letter-Number-Sequencing) and physical activity upon MI were evaluated. RESULTS: Mental duration for the iTUG was significantly shorter than the active durations. Results also provided evidence of better haptic representation than motor representation in all participants; however, only for the CMI-regeneration condition controls outperformed children with visual impairments and blindness (CVIB). Exercise and working memory performance showed a significant contribution only on a few MI tests. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Our results suggest a possible relationship between motor performance, body representation deficits and visual impairment which needs to be addressed in the evaluation and treatment of CVIB. The design of new rehabilitation interventions that focus on strengthening adequate body perception and representation should be proposed and tested to promote motor development in CVIB.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2021 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103835