Abstract
Background & Objectives: Developmental coordination disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a defect in the development of coordination in movements. The motor coordination of children with developmental coordination disorder is lower than the expected chronological age level, so they are described with raw movement traits. This group of children is delayed in achieving basic motor milestones such as crawling or walking, and the difficulty in coordinating fine or gross movements interferes with academic achievements and various aspects of their daily lives. Developmental coordination disorder covers 5%–6% of schoolchildren. Seventy–five percent of these people show movement problems in adulthood as well. Despite the high prevalence of this disorder, the severe consequences that follow for students are still not well recognized in educational and clinical environments. The present study aimed to determine the frequency of motor, speech fluency, and handwriting problems in students with this disorder.
Methods: The present research was a descriptive–analytical study. The statistical population included all 9–11 years old boys with developmental coordination disorder living in Tehran Province, Iran. In this study, 21 students were selected using purposeful sampling. The subjects were selected if they met the necessary criteria based on the developmental coordination disorder diagnosis questionnaire and the handwriting recognition checklist the teacher answered. After that, they were evaluated to check motor and speech fluency problems. The research tools were the Developmental Coordination Disorder Diagnosis Questionnaire (Salman et al., 2009), the Handwriting Recognition Checklist (Bahrami, 2018), the Phonetic Fluency Test (Ebrahimipour, 2013), and the Lincoln–Ozeretsky Motor Developmental Scale (Sloan, 1955). The inclusion criteria for the subjects in the study were the presence of developmental coordination disorder in the participants based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM–5) criteria, the absence of sensory problems and obvious brain lesions, and the absence of medication. Regarding the exclusion criteria, subjects were excluded from the study if they did not consent or participate continuously in the assessment stages. This research used descriptive statistics indices to describe the data's characteristics, including mean, standard deviation, frequency, and frequency percentage. Also, the Spearman correlation coefficient was used to examine the relationships between the subscales of the tests. It was done using SPSS software, version 25, at a significance level 0.05.
Results: The results showed that the performance of students in the subscales of static general coordination, dynamic general coordination, dynamic hand coordination, movement speed, and simultaneous (symmetric) voluntary movement was poor and significant (p<0.05). A significant negative correlation existed between the total number of correct words produced and the average of the total clusters in the phonological fluency test (p<0.05). The highest percentage of students' errors in the handwriting inventory was related to the lack of proper spacing between letters, words, the weakness in correct punctuation, and the fit of letters. A 95% confidence interval indicates that the true error rate lies in the interval between the lower limit and the upper limit).
Conclusion: The current study showed that the movement problems of the 9–11 years old boys with developmental coordination disorder have caused their poor performance in speech and writing tests. Based on the current research results, it is suggested that experts and teachers, in their interventions aimed at improving children's academic skills, should pay attention to training and practice children's chain movement activities.
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