2018 Volume 56 Issue 4 Pages 241-249
Recently, academic researchers and practitioners have expressed increased interest in studying children with motor diffıculties or motor clumsiness, that is, children with developmental coordination disorders (DCD). Many children with developmental disorders such as intellectual disabilities (ID) and autism spectrum disorders (ADS) also have motor diffıculties. Nevertheless, few studies published in Japan have examined this topic. The present article reviews the nature of motor diffıculties of children with developmental disabilities and presents some intervention principles. In general, children with intellectual disabilities perform less well on standardized motor assessments such as the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (MABC-2), which provides scores for 3 motor ability sub-components: manual dexterity, aiming and catching, and balance, and yields a combined component score (total score). Children with autism spectrum disorders have lower total scores on this test battery, suggesting that their general level of motor skill may be different from that of typically developing children. Motor diffıculties are also reported frequently not only on the basis of scores on objective motor skill assessment tests, but also from parents' reports on questionnaires such as the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire-2007 (DCDQ-2007). Future research should examine the heterogeneity of motor diffıculties in children with developmental disabilities.
