We compared variations for teaching a sequence of responses through forward chaining. Seven children who had been diagnosed with autism participated in a comparison of teacher completion (TC) of steps beyond the training step and manually guiding the student (SC) to complete steps beyond the training step. A no-completion (NC) condition, in which…

Motor skills are often demonstrated with a combination of verbal information and video demonstration. In this study, participants learned to tie nautical knots with a video clip demonstrating the motor task preceded by a descriptive or a metaphorical, picture-like verbalization. In a control condition participants learned the knots with a video…

Background: Deficit in motor performance is common in children with intellectual disabilities (ID). A motor function measure with sound psychometric properties is indispensable for clinical and research use. The purpose of this study was to compare the psychometric properties of three commonly used clinical measures for assessing motor function in…

In motor speech disorders, dysarthric features impacting intelligibility, articulation, fluency and voice emerge more saliently in conversation than in repetition, reading or singing. A role of the basal ganglia in these task discrepancies has been identified. Further, more recent studies of naturalistic speech in basal ganglia dysfunction have…

Background: We may improve our understanding of the role of common versus unique risk factors in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by examining ADHD-related cognitive deficits in single- (SPX), and multi-incidence (MPX) families. Given that individuals from multiplex (MPX) families are likely to share genetic vulnerability for the…

Previous research has shown that actions impair the visual perception of categorically action-consistent stimuli. On the other hand, actions can also facilitate the perception of spatially action-consistent stimuli. We suggest that motorvisual impairment is due to action planning processes, while motorvisual facilitation is due to action control…

22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11DS) is a common microdeletion disorder associated with mild to moderate intellectual disability and specific neurocognitive deficits, particularly in visual-motor and attentional abilities. Currently there is evidence that the visual-motor profile of 22q11DS is not entirely mediated by intellectual disability and…

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors such as obesity and reduced cardio-respiratory fitness. It has also been shown that adolescents with probable DCD (p-DCD) have elevated cardiac output (CO) and stroke volume (SV) compared to typically developing (TD)…

Background: Although there is growing awareness about the potential for people with Down syndrome (DS) to become literate, we know little about the characteristics of handwriting within this population. Methods: Thirty-three participants took part in this experiment. Eleven adults with DS and 22 typically developing individuals (11 children…

The goal of this work was to analyze postural control in Down syndrome (DS) participants considering three different groups composed by children, teenagers and adults with DS. An analysis of the centre of pressure (COP) displacement during standing position was therefore performed for the three groups of subjects. The obtained signal of COP was…

The study of heart rate variability is an important tool for a noninvasive evaluation of the neurocardiac integrity. The present study aims to evaluate the autonomic heart rate modulation in supine and standing positions in 12 children diagnosed with cerebral palsy and 16 children with typical motor development (control group), as well as to…

Theory suggests that imagined and executed movement planning relies on internal models for action. Using a chronometry paradigm to compare the movement duration of imagined and executed movements, we tested children aged 7-11 years and adults on their ability to perform sequential finger movements. Underscoring this tactic was our desire to gain a…

This study describes the performance of children 8-11 years of age on the Community Balance and Mobility Scale (CB&M) and associations between performance and age, body mass index (BMI), and sex. A convenience sample of 84 was recruited. The CB&M was administered using instructions we developed for children. Mean CB&M total scores (95%…

The purpose of this investigation was to compare fine motor task completion when using video models presented on a smaller screen size (Personal Digital Assistant) compared to a larger laptop screen size. The investigation included four high school students with autism spectrum disorders and mild to moderate intellectual disabilities and used an…

There is a dearth of research regarding young children with high intellectual abilities, particularly research involving the direct observation of children in naturalistic settings. The current study examines 2 years of observations of young children (aged 37-71 months; n = 34) at an early childhood facility. The children were observed during the…