Effects of virtual reality training intervention on predictive motor control of children with DCD – A randomized controlled trial

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Highlights

  • First study of the application of virtual reality (VR) training for predictive motor control in DCD children.

  • Results are consistent with the hypothesis of the developmental delay of internal modeling in DCD children.

  • Predictive motor control functions of DCD children improved after (VR) training intervention.

  • VR interventions may be useful to optimize motor skills in those with DCD.

Abstract

It has been hypothesised that deficits in the functions of predictive motor control and internal modeling may contribute to motor control issues of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Virtual reality (VR) technologies have great potential to provide opportunity for Motor observation and motor imagery (MI) which could enhance learning and development of motor skills in children with DCD. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the benefits of a VR training intervention to improve predictive motor control functions of children with DCD. Forty female children with DCD (aged 7–10) were randomly assigned to VR and control groups. In this study, an experimental pre-post and follow-up design was used, and Predictive motor control functions were measured before and after the VR intervention and two-months later. Predictive motor control was evaluated using MI (by hand rotation task), action planning (by sword placement task), and rapid and online control (by rotational tracking task) tests. VR intervention consisted of a selection of Xbox 360 Kinect games that were performed for sixteen 30-min sessions over 8 weeks. Compared to the control group, the VR group improved significantly on measures of MI, motor planning, and rapid and online control scores from pre- to post-test and retained their performance to follow-up. Overall, it seems that virtual reality training program may be used as an appropriate intervention approach for developing the ability of MI and predictive motor control functions in DCD children.

Section snippets

What this paper adds?

Assuming that deficit of internal modeling and predictive motor control is one of the causes of motor problems of children with DCD and also considering the proposed therapeutic role of motor imagery training in this area, the results of this paper show that virtual reality training interventions could help improve and consolidate predictive motor control in DCD children through increasing motor imagery abilities. This insight is a novel finding and can inform parents to focus on using virtual

Participants

Cluster sampling was used to select six public elementary schools with same socioeconomic backgrounds within the same district in Tabriz, Iran. The sample size was established with G-Power 3.1.9.2. based on assuming an effect size of 0.3 and at last 80 % power, a sample size of 32 children was deemed to be adequate to examine the hypothesis. We determined the sample size to be 40 children (2 groups of 20) regarding to, expecting possibility of individual variability and drop of participants,

Effect of intervention on MI

First, we provided the information on the participants’ characteristics (Table 2).

The results of repeated measures analysis of variance (2 × 3) as presented in Table 3, revealed significant main effects of time, group and also for the interaction between group and time (p < 0.05). Due to a significant group by time interaction was encountered (see Fig. 2A; Table 3), a follow-up analysis was conducted and revealed that there were no significant differences between the groups in the pre-test

Discussion

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of VR training on the predictive models of DCD children. For this purpose, we investigated the effect of selected VR Xbox 360 Kinect-based exergames on the functions of MI, action planning, and rapid and online control. Based on the assumption that the deficits of predictive modeling manifest motor impairments of DCD, it was predicted that VR training would be able to provide augmented feedback and opportunity of observational learning and

Conclusion

This study was the first research on the effectiveness of VR training on the feedforward motor control functions of DCD children. With VR training and attainment of the ability of MI, DCD children seem to be able to develop and modify the internal models of movements, and their predictive modeling has probably improved. VR games offer an opportunity to immersive experience, involvement and promoting active learning for DCD children, but these games were not recommended as a replacement for

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Soghra EbrahimiSani: Data curation, Writing - original draft, Software, Project administration. Mehdi Sohrabi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Project administration. Hamidreza Taheri: Supervision. Mohammad Tagi Agdasi: Supervision. Shahrokh Amiri: Supervision.

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