Studies on Children With Developmental Coordination Disorder in the Past 20 Years: A Bibliometric Analysis via CiteSpace.

Mei-Qin Wu,De-Qing Wu,Chun-Ping Hu,Lai-Sang Iao

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.776883

Abstract

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have been commonly observed and drawn an increasing amount of attention over the past decades. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the origin, current hotspots, and research trends on children with DCD using a bibliometric tool. After searching with “children” and “developmental coordination disorder” as the “topic” and “title” words, respectively, 635 original articles with 12,559 references were obtained from the electronic databases, Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). CiteSpace V.5.7.R2 was used to perform the analysis. The number of publications in this field was increasing over the past two decades. John Cairney from the Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, Canada, was found to be the most productive researcher. Meanwhile, McMaster University and Canada were the most productive research institution and country, respectively. Reference and journal co-citation analyses revealed the top landmark articles and clusters in this field. Clumsiness was the most strength burst keyword. Moreover, task, meta-analysis, difficulty, adult, and impact will be the active research hotspots in future. These findings provide the trends and frontiers in the field of children with DCD, and valuable information for clinicians and scientists to identify new perspectives with potential collaborators and cooperative countries.

Highlights

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) exhibit severe motor clumsiness that interferes with academic achievement and the activities of daily living [1]
Symptoms of DCD occur in the early stage of development, but it is often not identified until school age, leaving missed good opportunities for early intervention [2]
These children have previously been described with a variety of terms such as developmental dyspraxia, minimal brain dysfunction, perceptual-motor dysfunction, physical awkwardness, or, most commonly, the clumsy child syndrome [3, 4]

Summary

Introduction

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) exhibit severe motor clumsiness that interferes with academic achievement and the activities of daily living [1]. Symptoms of DCD occur in the early stage of development, but it is often not identified until school age, leaving missed good opportunities for early intervention [2]. These children have previously been described with a variety of terms such as developmental dyspraxia, minimal brain dysfunction, perceptual-motor dysfunction, physical awkwardness, or, most commonly, the clumsy child syndrome [3, 4]. In 1994, these children were collectively referred to as DCD at an international consensus meeting which held in London, Ontario [5]. After the London consensus meeting, DCD, as a unified terminology, lacks systematic research on global research trends and hotspots in this field. Evaluative bibliometrics is a field of quantitative science that has emerged as a powerful tool to evaluate research performance, which can serve to identify influential articles that have shaped medical practice and fostered new research ideas [6]

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