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Five to six percent of school-aged children have Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Their motor coordination deficits impact many activities of daily life, including the ability to adapt the walking pattern to environmental demands. This results in a higher risk of tripping and falling in sports and play. As these activities often involve performing dual tasks, the researchers investigated the impact of dual tasking on walking adaptability in children with DCD. Therefore, they tested the hypothesis that 6–12 year old children with DCD would show lower levels of walking adaptability than typically developing children, and that dividing their attention between the walking adaptability and a concurrent secondary task would further aggravate the performance deficit. The research group, led by professor Vivian Weerdesteyn from the department of Rehabilitation, published the results in Gait and Posture on April 25th.
They conducted a cross-sectional study in 26 children with DCD and 69 typically developing children. The children performed a challenging walking adaptability task on a treadmill as a single task, and with a concurrent visuo-motor or cognitive task. Children with DCD performed poorer on the walking adaptability task than typically developing children; their performance deficit further increased when a concurrent visuo-motor task was added, but not with the concurrent cognitive task. These results highlight the problems that children with DCD experience in sports and play activities that involve walking adaptations while dual tasking. Importantly, we recently demonstrated beneficial effects of a task-specific walking adaptability training in children with DCD. The results showed that walking adaptability improved not only on the treadmill-based task, but the effect also generalized to overground walking. These training-induced gains were retained after 6 months follow-up. This paper has been published in Gait & Posture as well in November 2021.
Publications
Rosanne Kuijpers, Ellen Smulders, Brenda E. Groen, Bouwien C.M. Smits-Engelsman, Maria W.G. Nijhuis-van der Sanden, Vivian Weerdesteyn. The effects of a visuo-motor and cognitive dual task on walking adaptability in children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder. Gait & Posture. 2022; 95:183-185. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2022.04.019.
Rosanne Kuijpers, Ellen Smulders, Brenda E. Groen, Bouwien C.M. Smits-Engelsman, Maria W.G. Nijhuis-van der Sanden, Vivian Weerdesteyn. Walking adaptability improves after treadmill training in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder: A proof-of-concept study. Gait & Posture. 2022; 92:258-263. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2021.11.038
