Analysis of praxis task demands in the assessment of children with developmental motor deficits

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Abstract
Children with developmental motor deficits and normal control children were evaluated with a battery of praxis tests. Several task demands were examined: representational nature of the gesture, type of limb gesture (transitive vs. intransitive), input modality (command vs. imitation), movement complexity (single gestures vs. sequences of gestures), and movement system (limb vs. orofacial). Performance of the children with developmental motor deficits was significantly lower than that of the normal control children on most of the tasks. Specifically, the children with motor deficits demonstrated impairments in performance of both representational and nonrepresentational gestures relative to the normal controls. Further, they demonstrated impairments in their performance of gestures across different movement systems (i.e., limb, oral) compared to the normal controls. Examination of task demands indicated that, for children with motor deficits, complex gestures were performed less well than single gestures, transitive gestures were performed less well than intransitive gestures, and performance to command was poorer than performance to imitation.

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