The Effects of Physical Activity in Children and Adolescents with Developmental Coordination Disorder.

The purpose of this literature review was to detect and study the effectiveness of therapeutic intervention programs, such as physical activities and sports, on children and adolescents with Developmental Motor Coordination Disorder (DCD) to improve their motor skills. The sample for this study consisted of 48 (100%) papers, specifically, 40 (83.5%) articles, 3 (6.2%) doctoral theses, 2 (4.1%) master's theses and 3 (6.2%) papers from conference proceedings from the year 2014 to 2022. To search the sample, the following terms were used: DCD or dyspraxia, physical activity programs, intervention, physical intervention, physical education, etc. The results for the existence of statistically significant results and internal validity of intervention programs using physical activities and sports in children and adolescents with DCD showed that a large number of intervention programs improved the children's motor skills as well as their daily functionality. In contrast, other interventions failed to improve dynamic and static balance. The negative result could be due either to the short duration of the interventions or to the improper suboptimal design-organization of the methodology of these programs-such as the heterogeneous intervention samples and the use of inappropriate and reliable assessment tools.

An Investigation of Working Memory Profile and Fluid Intelligence in Children With Neurodevelopmental Difficulties.

The present study aims to evaluate the distinct patterns of working memory (WM) capacity of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), High-functioning children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and children with Down syndrome (DS). More specifically, the current study investigates the complex relationship of fluid intelligence and WM between 39 children with DLD, 20 H igh-functioning children with ASD, and 15 children with DS. All children were evaluated in different measures of Phonological Working Memory, Visual-spatial Working Memory whereas Fluid Intelligence was measured with Raven Progressive Matrices. The result analysis revealed a significant difference among the three groups, both among each function separately and the correlations among them, as well. The results revealed that the DLD groups and High-functioning ASD group exhibited a common picture or an overlap of performances in all Phonological and Visuo-spatial working memory measures, except Backward Digit Recall task. As for the DS group research findings revealed different and unique working memory patterns in comparison to DLD group and High-functioning ASD. Their differences have been studied and further conclusions have been drawn about the different patterns of working memory among the three clinical groups. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of support for learning. The common profile that characterize the two developmental conditions and the distinct pattern of working memory performance in DS group underlies the need for further research in the field.