Robotic assessment of rapid motor decision making in children with perinatal stroke.
Rachel L Hawe, Andrea M Kuczynski, Adam Kirton and 1 others
PMID 32664980WHAT IT FOUND
Children with hemiparetic cerebral palsy made more errors on a robotic task requiring rapid decisions to hit targets and avoid distractors.
They hit fewer targets and more distractors than typically developing peers, showing impairments in both motor skills and inhibitory control.
Key findings
01Children with hemiparetic cerebral palsy hit fewer targets and more distractors than typically developing children on a rapid motor decision task.
02Performance on the task improved with age for both groups, but the gap between children with HCP and typically developing peers may widen rather than decrease.
03Contrary to expectations, adding the complexity of distractors did not worsen the ability of children with HCP to hit targets; they actually hit a greater percentage of targets in the complex task.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study did not include formal neuropsychological testing, so it is unclear which specific executive functions caused the errors. The simpler task was always performed before the complex task, which may have created a learning effect that improved performance on the second task. Participants were able to follow instructions and perform the robotic task, so the findings may not apply to children with more severe impairments. The cross-sectional design cannot determine how executive function develops over time in individual children.
Declared interests
Funded by Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation and Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary. No other conflicts of interest are reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that children with HCP perform worse on complex tasks simply because they are overwhelmed. The study found that adding distractors actually increased the percentage of targets hit by children with HCP, suggesting that the cognitive demand may have helped focus their attention rather than hindered their motor performance.