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Abstract :
[en] Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a developmental disorder characterized by marked impairments in motor skills. Despite its negative impact on daily activities and on cognitive and academic performance, the mechanisms underlying this disorder remain largely unknown. One hypothesis that has been proposed is that the poor motor coordination abilities may be attributed to impairments in motor learning and, more specifically, in learning of the correct sequencing of movements (Gheysen et al., 2011). To date, only two studies have directly investigated sequence learning in DCD, but their results are contradictory. The aim of this study was to explore learning of motor sequence in DCD children by means of a modified version of the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task where the standard keyboard was replaced by a touch screen in order to reduce the impact of the DCD group’s motor difficulties. A total of 34 children (17 with DCD and 17 typically developing (TD) children aged between 6 and 12 years old participated in this study. Results show that DCD children were able to learn the sequence as fast and as accurately as TD children. These findings, showing that children with DCD present the same degree of implicit learning as TD children, differ from those obtained by Gheysen et al. (2011) and so, challenge the motor sequence learning deficit hypothesis. We suggest that differences between studies are not related to an implicit sequence learning deficit per se in children with DCD, but rather to methodological aspects like the response mode used in the studies.