| Abstract No.: | C-D3143 |
| Country: | Canada |
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| Title: | AGE EFFECTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF UPPER LIMB COORDINATION AND TIMING |
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 1 Robyn Traynor*; 1 Victoria Galea;
1 McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
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| Content: | Objectives: A vast proportion of children are afflicted by chronic motor impairments, often presenting as an underlying inability to learn, coordinate and appropriately time motor actions. This inability may also be a delay: for example, children with Developmental Coordination Disorder appear to possess a level of motor control more comparable to a younger, typically developing child’s ability. The purpose of our research is to explore the development of upper limb coordination in typically developing children in order to further understand the age effects of motor control. Here, we specifically explore the issues of timing and joint coordination in a functional reaching task.
Materials and Methods: We created a cyclical reach-and-grasp task to characterize coordination in typically developing children, aged five to ten. Kinematic and motion data were collected using a VICON motion capture system, sampling at a rate of 100 hertz and focussed on the upper extremity. The children first completed the task in one plane and then again across three different planes, adding a factor of complexity to our task. They were required to repeat the task for one minute, in time with a metronome set to 60 beats per minute. We derived shoulder and elbow angles from the kinematic data along with the children’s ability to maintain cadence.
Results: Our preliminary results show that children comprising the younger end of our age spectrum, ages five to seven, were more erratic in their shoulder/elbow coordination. In addition, younger children had considerable difficulty maintaining the required cadence as opposed to children aged eight and older. These older children were able to successfully maintain the cadence during both the simple uniplanar task and the more complex triplanar task.
Conclusions: There are clear age effects on the development of upper limb coordination and timing, specifically with respect to coordination about the shoulder and elbow and in the ability to maintain a set rhythm during task execution. A clearer understanding of the developmental timeline of coordination may provide further insight into the neural roots of various coordination disorders.
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