Motor Deficits In Children Research Articles

Association between visual perceptual deficits and motor deficits in children with developmental coordination disorder

This study explored the relation between a motor‐free visual perceptual deficit, different visual‐motor integration deficits, and different motor skills in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Thirty‐six children (22 males), aged 9 or 10 years, with DCD and a control group (n=36), matched for age and sex, were assessed with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC), a ball‐catching test, a jumping test, a timed response task to a visual moving stimulus, and the Beery‐Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual‐Motor Integration, incorporating copying, visual discrimination, and tracing tasks. Children with DCD performed significantly worse than the control group on all measures. The visual discrimination task did not correlate significantly with any of the motor tasks. The visual timing task correlated significantly with the ball‐catching test in the DCD group. The copying test was significantly correlated with the MABC in the DCD group. The association between visual‐perceptual deficits and motor tasks was shown to be task specific.

Early diagnosis of spastic diplegia, spastic hemiplegia, and quadriplegia.

A retrospective study examined early neurodevelopmental behaviors of children with spastic diplegia, spastic hemiplegia, and quadriplegia (spastic, athetoid, or mixed) who had been followed up longitudinally in a high-risk infant follow-up clinic. Compared with peers with normal outcomes, children with all three types of cerebral palsy had significantly lower scores on the Bayley Mental Scale at 4 months of age; children with hemiplegia and quadriplegia also scored significantly lower on the Bayley Motor Scale. On the Movement Assessment of Infants at 4 months of age, the children with hemiplegia and quadriplegia showed significantly higher risk scores than the nonhandicapped group. The Movement Assessment of Infants was more than three times as sensitive as the Bayley Motor Scale in detecting motor abnormalities in 4-month-old infants with diplegia and more than twice as sensitive in detecting early abnormalities of hemiplegia. At 1 year of age, however, the Bayley Motor Scale was extremely sensitive in picking up motor deficits in children with all three types of cerebral palsy.

CONGENITAL RUBELLA: PATHOGENESIS OF MOTOR DEFICITS

Study of the motor behavior of 43 children, ages 3 to 4½ years, with major hearing loss and a history of maternal rubella revealed a relation between the character and degree of their motor deficits and the maternal gestational age at which the infection had occurred. It appears that infection during the first 4 gestational weeks results in the greatest multiple handicaps for rubella children, and that the most serious motor deficits are associated with this period of pregnancy. It was also found that locomotor activities that require the maintenance of upright posture and equilibrium are most frequently, though not seriously, affected if the rubella infection occurs between the fifth and the eighth week of gestation; the risk of motor deficits is considerably reduced if infection occurs after the eighth week of pregnancy. The result of the study supports the hypothesis that motor deficits in children with congenital rubella can be attributed to damage at specific stages of embryologic development, when the structures that will be involved in a particular motor activity are in their most crucial stage of organization and differentiation.