scholarly journals Gender and hand dominance on fine motor skills among Grade 1–7 learners with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-102
Author(s):  
Refilwe Gloria Pila-Nemutandani ◽  
Basil Joseph Pillay ◽  
Anneke Meyer

Children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder encounter difficulties in many activities in their daily lives that require motor coordination skills. The aim of this study was to establish whether children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder have deficits in fine motor skills. Eighty male and female learners diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder matched with 80 non-attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder from the North West and Limpopo provinces (South Africa), aged 7–13  years, participated in the study. All participants completed the grooved pegboard test, the maze coordination task, and the finger tapping test. These instruments measure various functions of motor speed and eye–hand coordination. The findings reveal that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder performed significantly poorer than the control group with regard to the grooved pegboard and maze coordination tasks, but not with the finger tapping task. There were no gender differences in all the tests. Performance on the maze coordination task with the non-dominant hand was poorer for the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder group with regard to the time taken to complete the task. However, no hand dominance differences were found on the grooved pegboard and finger tapping tests. The study revealed a relationship between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptomatology and motor problems with regard to complex tasks of accuracy, but not on a simple task of motor speed. It is, therefore, recommended that since children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder show motor deficiencies, motor skill training should be considered as part of the intervention, as these skills are needed for many daily activities and academic competencies.

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amira Salah Lotfy ◽  
Mohammed El Sayed Darwish ◽  
Ehab Sayed Ramadan ◽  
Rania Makram Sidhom

Abstract Background Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development. Although children with ADHD made much more spelling errors, they had a distinct pattern of letter insertions, replacements, transpositions, and omissions. This mistake type is sometimes referred to as graphemic buffer errors, and it is caused by a lack of attention required for motor planning. The aim of study was to assess the incidence of dysgraphia in Arabic language in children with ADHD for better helping, diagnosis and management of those children. Results Ten percent of ADHD children had normal handwriting with no disability, 40% had excellent handwriting with a minimum of disability and 50% of ADHD children showed mild to moderate disability. There were significant differences between ADHD children and control children regarding results of each item on the subtest of handwriting of dysgraphia disability scale (DDS), respecting lines, spacing between words, letter direction, spelling a sentence, and punctuation. Drawing affected in ADHD children. The finger tapping speed was affected in almost ADHD children. Conclusions Dysgraphia highly presents in our sample of ADHD children with poor fine motor skills in ADHD children than normal children. ADHD children have illegible handwriting, not respecting lines, insufficient space between and within words, multiple spelling errors, and omissions of letters or words. Graphesthesia and stereognosis are affected more in ADHD children than in control children drawing and finger tapping speed affected in ADHD children.


Author(s):  
Maria Mokobane ◽  
Basil J. Pillay ◽  
Anneke M. Meyer

Background: Many children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) display motor deficiencies during their daily routine, which may have impact on their developmental course. Children with ADHD who experience motor deficiencies often display deficits in tasks requiring movements, such as handwriting.Aim: This study investigated deficiencies in fine motor skills in primary school children with ADHD. The study further sought to establish whether ADHD subtypes differ in deficiencies of fine motor performance, recorded for both the dominant and non-dominant hands.Methods: The Disruptive Behavior Disorders Rating Scale, completed by educators and parents, was used to screen for ADHD symptoms. Researchers confirmed the diagnosis of ADHD. Motor functioning was assessed using the Grooved Pegboard and Maze Coordination. The children diagnosed with ADHD were matched for age and gender with controls without ADHD. The sample consisted of an ADHD group (160) and control group (160) of primary school children from the Moletjie area.Results: Children with ADHD (predominantly inattentive subtype) and ADHD (combined subtype) performed significantly more poorly than the control group on the Grooved Pegboard (p < 0.05) with both the dominant and non-dominant hand. No significant difference between the hyperactivity and impulsiveness subtype and the controls were found. There was no difference on the Maze Coordination Task (p > 0.05) between the ADHD subtypes and the controls.Conclusion: Difficulties in fine motor skills are prevalent in children with ADHD, particularly in the ADHD-PI and ADHD-C. Problems are encountered in distal, complex, speeded tasks. The effect may lead to poor handwriting and academic performance.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Luo ◽  
Christine Chen ◽  
Jack H Adamek ◽  
Deana Crocetti ◽  
Stewart H Mostofsky ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTMirror overflow is involuntary movement that accompanies unilateral voluntary movement on the opposite side of the body, and is commonly seen in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Children with ADHD show asymmetry in mirror overflow between dominant and non-dominant hand, yet there are competing mechanistic accounts of why this occurs. Using EEG during a sequential, unimanual finger-tapping task, we found that children with ADHD exhibited significantly more mirror overflow than typically developing (TD) controls, especially during the tapping of the non-dominant hand. Furthermore, source-level EEG oscillation analysis revealed that children with ADHD showed decreased alpha (8-12 Hz) event-related desynchronization (ERD) compared with controls in both hemispheres, but only during tapping of the non-dominant hand. Moreover, only the ERD ipsilateral to the mirror overflow during non-dominant hand movement correlated with both magnitude of overflow movements and higher ADHD symptom severity (Conners ADHD Hyperactivity/Impulsiveness scale) in children with ADHD. TD controls did not show these relationships. Our findings suggest that EEG differences in finger-tapping in ADHD are related primarily to voluntary movement in the non-dominant hand. Our results are also consistent with the Ipsilateral Corticospinal Tract (CST) Hypothesis, which posits that the atypical persistence of mirror overflow in ADHD may originate in the sensorimotor areas ipsilateral to mirror overflow and be transmitted via non-decussating CST fibers.


Author(s):  
Govindarajan Srimathveeravalli ◽  
Venkatraghavan Gourishankar ◽  
Amrish Kumar ◽  
Thenkurussi Kesavadas

We present the experimental results contrasting virtual fixtures (VFs) with a new shared control (SC) technique for rehabilitation of fine motor skills. The SC assistance algorithm used haptic attributes as the control goal. VF provided assistance based on trajectory. Shapes were chosen from the Visual Motor Integration test book and were used to train candidate’s nondominant hand, using samples recorded from their dominant hand. The results were analyzed using time, trajectory, forces, shape of trajectory, and haptic profiles as metrics. The results indicate that performance of VF and SC were comparable for simple trajectories and SC performed better for complex trajectories.


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