Children with
Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) are reported to have high
temporal variability in tasks requiring precise timing. The current study examined whether this timing deficit was due to the
cerebellar 'explicit timing' process in the discontinuous, but not the continuous movement. Ten children with DCD and 31 typically developing children performed continuous, discontinuous circle and line drawing tasks. Results showed that both children with DCD and their age-matched controls had higher
temporal variability in the discontinuous than that in the continuous movements. Individual comparisons between each child with DCD and the performance of typically developing children revealed that 2 out of 10 children with DCD showed limited timing deficit in both types of discontinuous drawing (lines and circles). Additionally, three different children with DCD had timing problems with only discontinuous line drawing. Thus, the possibility of a compromised
cerebellar function may exist in a subgroup of children with DCD. This work raises a critical issue
with respect to the functional
heterogeneity of this population and emphasizes the importance of an individualized analysis in this
movement disorder.
