Task-specificity and transfer of skills in school-aged children with and without developmental coordination disorder

Aim: To compare the effects of two Active Video Game (AVG) protocols on transfer of learning in children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Methods: Fifty children, aged 6-10 years were randomly allocated to either group A or B. Children in group A participated in a set of Nintendo Wii ball games whereas group B played agility games (8 DCD and 17 typically developing children (TD) per group). Participants in each group practiced Wii games for 20 min twice a week for 10 weeks. All children also practiced ball and agility games in real-world settings, once per week. Results: Both protocols yielded positive effects with the largest effect sizes shown on agility and balance items of the PERF-FIT and KTK tests. No interaction was found on learning real-world games and the virtual protocol, except for a Ping-Pong game. A significant interaction of time by protocol group indicated that the Ball group improved more on BOT-2-Upper-Limb Coordination than the Agility group. Importantly, children with DCD improved comparably with TD peers in virtual and real-world games. Conclusion: Independent of training protocol, both children with DCD and TD children performed better on trained and non-trained ball, balance and agility tasks after 10 weeks of training.