Somatosensory Processing Differences in Individuals With Developmental Coordination Disorder: A Pilot Study

Replicable, objective tools are crucial to identify children at risk of motor delays due to poor proprioceptive skills [1,2,3]. Individuals with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) often have proprioceptive impairments [4]. Our lab developed the Spatial Movement Sense tests (SMSts) to evaluate shape recognition without vision, utilizing active or passive hand movements (paper under review). This study aims to assess DCD children’s performance on SMSts and gauge its ability to detect differences in individuals with DCD compared to controls. Participants, recruited through convenience sampling, include 15 DCD and 43 control participants in an observational, cross-sectional study. They completed active and passive SMSts and standardized assessments. In the Passive Spatial Movement Sense (PSMS) test, a robotic arm moves a blindfolded participant’s arm and participants identify shapes after movement. In the Active Spatial Movement Sense (ASMS) test, participants control the robot arm to explore shapes, identifying them afterward. The participants also completed the Endpoint Position Sense (EPS) Test and a standardized motor assessment (BOT-2 Short form, BOT-2-SF). 2 way ANOVA tests were used to examine participant group differences while controlling for participant age. The DCD group showed significantly lower BOT-2-SF scores than the control group (p = 0.004) confirming motor coordination challenges in the DCD group. We saw significantly lower scores in the PSMS test in the DCD group (46% accuracy) than in the control group (58% accuracy) (p=0.003). However, the group difference was not statistically significant for the ASMS test (p=0.595) and the EPS test (p=0.640). This pilot study affirms the feasibility and validity of the PSMS test in assessing somatosensory challenges in DCD children. SMSts offer objective tools for somatosensory assessment, potentially enabling earlier detection of challenges in somatosensory processing.

References

Goyen, T. A., & Lui, K. (2009). Developmental coordination disorder in ‘apparently normal’ schoolchildren born extremely preterm. Archives of disease in childhood, 94(4), 298–302. https://doi.org/10.1136/adc.2007.134692

Biotteau, M., Albaret, J. M., & Chaix, Y. (2020). Developmental coordination disorder. Handbook of Clinical Neurology, 174, 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-64148-9.00001-6

Proske, U., & Gandevia, S. C. (2012). The proprioceptive senses: their roles in signaling body shape, body position and movement, and muscle force. Physiological Reviews, 92(4), 1651–1697. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00048.2011

Tran, H. T., Li, Y. C., Lin, H. Y., Lee, S. D., & Wang, P. J. (2022). Sensory Processing Impairments in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder. Children (Basel, Switzerland), 9(10), 1443. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9101443