Visual-proprioceptive mapping in children with developmental coordination disorder

Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) occurs in a small but significant proportion of children who present with impaired body–eye coordination and show poor acquisition of motor skills. This study investigated the visual–proprioceptive mapping ability of children with DCD from a small selected group, with particular reference to the use of vision in matching tasks. The children with DCD in this study were significantly poorer than control children on all matching tasks. They seemed to have particular difficulty in cross-modal judgements that required the use of visual information to guide proprioceptive judgements of limb position. A distinction is drawn between tasks that can be achieved purely through sensory matching and those that require body-centred spatial judgements, suggesting that it is the latter that posits a particular difficulty for children with DCD.