THE ROLE OF VISION IN WALKING PATTERNS IN CHILDREN WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF MOTOR COORDINATION

Abstract

Miriam Palomo, Ludvík Valtr, Reza Abdollahipour, Adrian Agricola, & Rudolf Psotta

Research has shown that children with developmental coordination disorder rely more heavily on vision to perform movement skills than their typically developing (TD) peers. The purpose of the current study was to investigate information processing by restricting visual information during walking tasks between TD children and children at risk of having developmental coordination disorder (DCDR). Thirty-two children (age: 8.9 ± 0.9 years) were asked to walk along a 10-metre walkway at a self-selected speed under four visual conditions: full-vision, visual input for 150-ms and for 100-ms within each 2 second, and non-vision. The results showed that TD children walked faster and with longer steps and strides than DCDR, regardless of the visual condition. In addition, the speed of walking and the step and stride length decreased significantly while the occlusion time increased, regardless of the level of motor competence. The study suggests that withdrawing and limiting visual information affect the gait cycle differently in DCDR and TD children.