Prevalence of Developmental Coordination Disorder in Rio Maior and São João da Ribeira in children with 3 and 4 years old

Abstract

The developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a motor disorder without neu-ral compromising that affects 5-6% of children in school-age (Zwicker, Missiuna, Harris, & Boyd, 2012).
The study aims to identify and describe the prevalence of probable DCD in in Rio Maior and São João da Ribeira in children with 3 and 4 years old. It was applied MABC-2 (Henderson & Sugden, 2007) in 46 children (3.9±0.26 years old, 25 and 21 boys) of three preschools.
2 children were identified has having probable DCD (4.4%), 7 children as being in the risk zone (15.2%), and 37 children as having a typical motor development (80.4%). It was verified a prevalence of left-handedness in probble DCD children (Cairney et al., 2008; Flouris, Faught, Hay, & Cairney, 2005). The least scored categories were aiming-catching for typical and probable DCD children, and bal-ance for at risk children; probably due to the involvement in less activities requir-ing aiming-catching and balance tasks, contrasting to a biggest incidence in man-ual dexterity activities, in order to prepare children for primary school.
This study clarifies the importance of MABC-2 application in order to identify probable DCD, as well as at risk children which had an incidence superior in 3.4 times.