The mediating role of childhood motor skills on the association between error correction and social pragmatic communication in adulthood

Le résumé fourni par la source

Early motor function is important for emerging social pragmatic communication (SPC) skills in both typical and atypical development. However, the nature of motor impairments relevant for higher-level communication is not well understood. Inefficient cerebellar error correction might directly cause both developmental coordination disorder (DCD) symptoms and SPC difficulties, through the extensive communication between cerebellar zones and brain-wide sensorimotor and higher-order networks. DCD symptoms related to cerebellar deficits could also impact SPC through affecting the developmental trajectory of social development, which requires motor skills. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that error correction deficits affect SPC outcomes through childhood DCD symptoms, by using contemporary causal inference methodology. We used a finger tapping task and computational modeling to measure cerebellar error correction in adult participants (n = 138), and quantified childhood DCD symptoms and SPC skills using psychometric measures. The results confirmed that error correction ability likely affects SPC skills, and indicated that childhood motor skills significantly mediated this. These results argue against a direct effect of domain-general error correction deficits on SPC, and instead suggest that cerebellum-related DCD symptoms affect sociocommunicative development more directly through motor deficits during development. Further research is required to test whether cerebellar error correction could be used as an early marker to identify children in need for early SPC interventions.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.