Auditory-Motor Synchronization in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder
Hello! I'm a PhD student in the Auditory Development Lab at McMaster University, under the supervision of Dr. Laurel Trainor. My research focuses on developmental coordination disorder, a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by deficits in motor skills. I'm very interested in the auditory timing perception of children with poor motor skills, how auditory timing and motor timing influence one another, and how rhythm and music could be used in interventions for children with deficits in motor coordination.
Please feel free to contact me by clicking the Email Author button, and to check out my poster under the Presentation button. I'll be at my Zoom link on Monday, August 10, 2020 from 3:30-4:45 pm.
Meeting ID: 876 5024 2247
Password: 190975
Auditory-Motor Synchronization in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder involving deficits in motor coordination, affecting 5-15% of school-age children. Children show deficits in motor and visual-motor timing, but the complex dynamics of auditory and auditory-motor timing has not been well studied, despite its importance for speech and music perception and production. Given previous research showing motor areas are involved in auditory time perception, we hypothesized children with DCD would have impaired auditory time perception and auditory-motor synchronization. A previous study in our lab measured perceptual discrimination thresholds for duration timing, rhythm timing, and pitch (control task). They found that children with DCD aged 6-7 have larger discrimination thresholds for duration and rhythm-based timing compared to typically developing (TD) children. Our current study investigates auditory-motor synchronization abilities in children with DCD and explores whether auditory rhythmic stimuli can help children with DCD (7-9 years) to execute rhythmic motor movements. Our experimental design aims to distinguish auditory timing perception alone, motor timing alone, and auditory-motor synchronization. We are testing tapping consistency when: tapping alone, with a metronome (at 400, 550, and 700 ms inter-onset intervals), continuation tapping (maintaining tapping after metronome stops), and tapping to the beat of musical dance excerpts. This study is ongoing, and experimenters are currently blind to group allocations (DCD vs. TD). Current data from 7- to 9-year-old children in both DCD and TD groups (n = 13 in blinded group A, n = 9 in blinded group B) shows tapping consistency is significantly higher when an auditory cue is present (metronome vs. continuation conditions, p < 0.0001, music vs. continuation conditions, p < 0.0001). The results are important for informing whether auditory-motor training may confer additional benefit over motor training alone for children with DCD, compared to conventional interventions based on motor function.