Daily motor characteristics in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder and in children with Specific Learning Disorder

Aim: An association between reading difficulties and coordination problems has been reported in several studies over the last decade. The aim of the present study was to investigate daily motor characteristics in two groups of children with developmental disorders, developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and specific learning disorder (SLD), compared to typically developing controls. Method: 96 children participated in the study, 33 with diagnosis of DCD, 29 with diagnosis of SLD (excluding children with dysgraphia) and 34 typically developing children. The Italian version of ‘Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire’ (Wilson et al., 2009 and Caravale et al., 2014) was used for the evaluation of the daily motor characteristics. DCDQ is a 15-item questionnaire designed to be self-administered by parents of children aged 5–15 years. Parents are asked to answer on a five-point Likert scale when comparing motor performance between their child and peers. The Total DCDQ scores and the three DCDQ subscores of the three groups of children were systematically compared in four distinct ANOVAs. When a significant main effect was found, the Tuckey Post-hoc tests were performed. Results: The three groups compared with regard to DCDQ total showed significant differences (F(2, 93)=42.3; p <0.01) with the DCD group scoring significantly lower than both SLD and controls (both p<0.01). With regard to sub-scores, SLD reached significantly lower mean scores than controls in ‘Fine motor/hand writing’ skills and in the ‘General coordination’ area (both p<0.01) while they obtained significantly higher scores than DCD in ‘Control during movement’ and ‘General coordination’ areas (both p <0.01). Discussion: Children with DCD showed more difficulties in daily motor performance compared to the other groups. Children with diagnosis of SLD diverged from typically developing children in general coordination skills and fine motor abilities. Our data suggest that although children with DCD present a more impaired global motor development, SLD may highlight difficulties in certain motor areas. These results are consisted with previous studies on motor difficulties in poor readers (Iversen et al., 2005) and encourage the routinely evaluation of motor skills in children with learning problems.