Prediction in Ball Catching by Children with and without a Developmental Coordination Disorder

Abstract

This study aimed to determine how predicting ability in ball catching changes with age and to explore this among children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) as judged by performance on the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (Henderson & Sugden, 1992) and by clinical evaluation. In Experiment 1, participants were 157 non-DCD children, age 5-12. In Experiment 2, 46 participants (age 5-7) from Experiment 1 were controls for 40 same-age children with a DCD. In Experiment 1, younger children (age 5-6) did not predict ball flight as well as older groups at short viewing times, and girls did not predict as well as boys. In Experiment 2, DCD children predicted more poorly at most viewing times compared to non-DCD peers. It was concluded that age and gender are crucial factors in predicting ball flight and that predicting ability is a fundamental problem in catching for younger, female, and DCD children.