There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Recent research suggests that children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD)
often show deficits in executive functioning (EF) and, more specifically, the ability
to use inhibitory control in 'hot', emotionally rewarding contexts. This study optimized
the assessment of sensitivity of children with DCD to emotionally significant stimuli
by using easily discriminable emotional expressions in a go/no-go task. Thirty-six
children (12 with DCD), aged 7-12years, completed an emotional go/no-go task in which
neutral facial expressions were paired with either happy or sad ones. Each expression
was used as both, a go and no-go target in different runs of the task. There were
no group differences in omission errors; however, the DCD group made significantly
more commission errors to happy no-go faces. The particular pattern of performance
in DCD confirms earlier reports of (hot) EF deficits. Specifically, a problem of inhibitory
control appears to underlie the atypical pattern of performance seen in DCD on both
cold and hot EF tasks. Disrupted coupling between cognitive control and emotion processing
networks, such as fronto-parietal and fronto-striatal networks, may contribute to
reduced inhibitory control in DCD. The implications for a broader theoretical account
of DCD are discussed, as are implications for intervention.