Gaze behaviour during walking in young adults with developmental coordination disorder

Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved..

BACKGROUND: Individuals with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) experience difficulty with motor coordination and this affects their daily functioning. Research indicated inferior visuospatial processing and oculomotor control in DCD. As visual information is essential for locomotor control, more insight in the gaze behaviour of this population during walking is required and crucial for gaze training interventions as a possible means to improve daily functioning of children and adults with DCD.

AIM: This study explored differences and similarities in gaze behaviour during walking between typically developing young adults and those with DCD.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Ten young adults with DCD (age: 22.13 ± 0.64) and ten typically developing individuals (age: 22.00 ± 1.05) completed a walking task in which they had to place their feet on irregularly placed targets wearing eye tracking glasses.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Individuals with DCD walked slower and demonstrated a different gaze strategy compared to their neurotypical peers as they fixated almost each and every target sequentially. Typically developing individuals, on the other hand, directed gaze further along the path and often fixated areas around the targets.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Despite adequate walking performance in daily situations in young adults with DCD, fundamental control deficits persist into adulthood. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS?: This paper is the first to demonstrate differences in gaze behaviour between young adults with DCD and typically developing individuals in a task that resembles a task of daily living, as previous research focused on laboratory tasks. This is a valuable finding as DCD has a clear impact on the daily life. Furthermore, this study demonstrated that the fundamental control deficits of DCD persist into adulthood despite frequent performance and practice of these daily tasks. Lastly, these findings might contribute to the therapeutic potential of gaze training interventions to improve the daily functioning of children and adults with DCD.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2020

Erschienen:

2020

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:71

Enthalten in:

Human movement science - 71(2020) vom: 15. Juni, Seite 102616

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Warlop, Griet [VerfasserIn]
Vansteenkiste, Pieter [VerfasserIn]
Lenoir, Matthieu [VerfasserIn]
Van Causenbroeck, Jérôme [VerfasserIn]
Deconinck, Frederik J A [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Developmental coordination disorder
Gaze behavior
Journal Article
Motor control
Walking
Young adults

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 09.11.2020

Date Revised 09.11.2020

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.humov.2020.102616

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM310345774