A meta-analysis was conducted to identify information
processing factors that characterise
children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). A total of 50
studies yielded
374 effect sizes based on 983 DCD and 987 control children. A mild generalised
performance
deficit was indicated, since motor-impaired children were inferior on almost
all measures of
information processing. There were, however, several areas where their
deficiencies were
more pronounced. The greatest deficiency was in visual-spatial processing.
This was evident
regardless of whether or not the tasks involved a motor component. Most
other deficiencies
were in the small-to-moderate range and included kinaesthetic and cross-modal
processing.
The findings support the notion that perceptual problems, particularly
in the visual
modality, are associated with difficulties in motor coordination.