The Severity and Nature of Motor Impairment in Asperger’s Syndrome: A comparison with Specific Developmental Disorder of Motor Function

Dido Green, Gillian Baird, Anna l. Barnett, Leslie Henderson, Jorg Huber and Shiela E. Henderson, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 43;5 (2002), pp 655-668.

The aims of this study were to measure objectively the extent and severity of motor impairment in children with Asperger’s Syndrome and to determine whether the motor difficulties experienced by such children differed in any way from those classified as having a Specific Developmental Disorder of Motor Function (SDD-MF). Criteria derived from ICD 10-R were used to identify 11 children with Asperger’s Syndrome and a material group of 9 children with a Specific Developmental Disorder of Motor Function.

All the children with Asperger’s Syndrome turned out to meet our criterion for a diagnosis of motor impairment, five of the six most severely motor impaired children in the whole study being from this group. Performance of the Asperger group was also slightly poorer on the Gesture Test.

This study is consistent with others suggesting a high prevalence of clumsiness inn Asperger’s Syndrome. Our findings also attest to the widespread prevalence of motor impairment in developmental disorders and the problems such co-morbidity poses for attempts to posit discrete and functionally coherent impairments underlying distinct syndromes.