A study of physical contact in passing-under movements - Children with developmental disorders have more collisions

Abstract

[Purpose] In this study, we examined physical contact with obstacles by children with and without developmental disorders (DD). [Subjests] Participants were nine children with DD and nine normal children. [Methods] All participants went through a course with seven pieces of playground equipment and six bars at different heights under three conditions: the first trial was with no instruction, the second trial was with an instruction to avoid collision, and the third trial was with an instruction to avoid collision and go through as fast as possible. [Results] The children with DD had more physical contact with the bars than normal children, indicating that attention deficit was not the cause of the increased contact in the children with DD. They also showed a significantly higher number of waist-contacts when compared to the normal children. This suggests that the children with DD had more contact when concurrent visual-feedback could not be used during avoidance movements. [Conclusion] It is possible that incorrect estimation based on body-characteristic information is the cause of the increased contact in the children with DD.