Visuo-motor disability in schoolchildren.

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Abstract
A survey of visuo-motor ability in a sample of 810 healthy schoolchildren brought to light 54 cases (6.7%) in which performance was so deficient as to suggest a specific developmental failure. Fourteen of these children were matched for age, sex, handedness, verbal I.Q., and home and school background with an equal number of children drawn from the same sample who had shown no evidence of selective visuo-motor impairment. Both groups were followed up for a 3-year period. The children with visuo-motor defect were significantly inferior to the controls on a series of tests of spatial judgement and manual skill, to present a variety of educational problems, especially in regard to spelling and arithmetic, and to give evidence of a relatively high incidence of maladjustment. There was also evidence of a relatively high incidence of perinatal abnormality in this group, raising the possibility of minimal early brain damage. Agnosic-apraxic disabilities in otherwise normal children are by no means rare and warrant wider recognition.

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