The Effect of Motor Imagery Training on Motor Planning of Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

Abstract

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) exhibit deficiencies in motor planning abilities and employ inefficient planning strategies. Motor imagery provides insight into the processes of motor planning and may serve as a beneficial intervention for improving action planning in children with DCD. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of a motor imagery training program on the motor planning of children with DCD. Motor imagery training was implemented in two groups of children, one with DCD and one without, and the ability to perform motor imagery was assessed using a task of End State Comfort (ESC). The study was used an experimental design with a pre- post-test design, and the participants included 36 children with DCD aged 7–12 years, randomly distributed into experimental (n = 18) and control (n = 18) groups. The sword task was employed to evaluate action planning in this study. The combined intervention of explicit and implicit imagery was used for the intervention. Results of repeated measures analysis of variance revealed a significant difference between the control and experimental groups (p = 0.008), indicating that the experimental group demonstrated better planning strategies for the end state comfort compared to the control group. These findings suggest that motor imagery training have the potential to be beneficial in improving motor planning in children with DCD.