ABSTRACT
Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) has been described under a variety of labels including minimal cerebral palsy, minimal brain dysfunction, clumsy child syndrome, developmental dyspraxia, sensory integrative dysfunction and mild motor problems.1 Collier first discussed the concept of developmental motor disorder in the early 1900s. He used the term "congenital maladroitness" to describe the developmental motor problems evidenced by children.2 By 1925, doctors and therapists in France were noting that many children with disabilities displayed motor awkwardness. They referred to this condition as "motor weakness" or "psychomotor syndrome."3 Orton4 identified abnormal clumsiness as one of the six most commonly occurring developmental disorders. He indicated that different types of developmental motor disorders may exist and that disorders in praxis and gnosis might result in motor skills deficits that were different from those arising from pyramidal, extrapyramidal or cerebellar dysfunction. More recently, Ayres5 referred to the clumsiness seen in some learning disabled children as developmental dyspraxia. She defined it as a disorder of sensory integration, interfering with the ability to plan and execute skilled or non-habitual motor tasks. She said that children with dyspraxia could attain a high degree of skill in specific activities that they practised; however, these skills were very specific and did not generalize to other similar activities. Gubbay6 described children with dyspraxia as clumsy children who display impaired performance of skilled movement despite normal intelligence and normal findings on a conventional neurological exam. Dawdy7 questioned the idea that children needed to demonstrate normal intelligence before being diagnosed as developmentally dyspraxic. He suggested that children's motor skills should be compared to their level of cognitive development. If motor skills were significantly poorer than one would predict based on cognitive skills, dyspraxia was a possible diagnosis.
