Toward Robot-Assisted Diagnosis of Developmental Coordination Disorder

Abstract

Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a chronic neurological impairment that affects motor coordination in 5%-8% of school-aged children. Diagnostic criteria for DCD are vague and focus on ruling out other conditions, leading to a lack of standardization in DCD diagnosis. This lack of standardization makes identification of the impairment, and therefore development of interventional tools, difficult. This study was conducted to investigate a set of potential quantitative models to identify DCD based on a robotic assessment, and to compare the performance of participants with DCD to normative models of typically developed motor function. An exploratory factor analysis achieved strong differentiation between control participants and participants with DCD. This demonstrates the feasibility of a robotic assessment as a diagnostic tool for DCD.