Relationship Between Intelligence and Complex Motor Skills in Children With and Without Developmental Dyslexia

Borkowska, Aneta R. · 2022 · Crossref

DOI: 10.18290/rpsych21242-4s

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Summary

This study investigates the relationship between intelligence, developmental dyslexia, and complex motor skills in children, aiming to clarify the mechanisms underlying the co-occurrence of reading disabilities and motor impairments. While dyslexia is primarily defined by reading difficulties, it often co-exists with motor deficits, potentially linked to cerebellar dysfunction or executive function impairments. The authors hypothesized that intelligence levels contribute significantly to complex motor performance in children with dyslexia, a factor previously under-investigated. The research sought to determine if motor difficulties in dyslexic children are specific to the disorder or influenced by general cognitive ability. The study involved 108 primary school children (mean age ~9 years), comprising 58 students with diagnosed developmental dyslexia and 50 control students without reading difficulties. All participants were right-handed. Intelligence was assessed using the WISC-R, with a cutoff of IQ 90 dividing participants into low and high intelligence subgroups. Reading abilities were measured using two subtests from the Dyslexia 3 battery. Complex motor skills were evaluated through four tasks: imitation of finger gestures (FG), learning movement sequences (MS), conflicting motor tasks (CM), and mirrored movements (MM). These tasks engaged various cognitive processes, including implicit learning, executive control, and mental rotation. Performance was rated by blind judges, and data were analyzed using ANOVAs and correlation analyses. Results indicated that children with dyslexia performed significantly worse than controls in tasks involving movement sequence learning and mirrored movements, supporting the cerebellar deficit hypothesis. However, no significant differences were found in finger gesture imitation or conflicting motor tasks between the groups. Intelligence was a significant predictor of performance across most motor tasks, explaining between 7.5% and 35% of the variance. Specifically, higher IQ correlated with better performance in finger gestures, conflicting tasks, and mirrored movements. Notably, the interaction between intelligence and dyslexia was significant for movement sequence learning; dyslexic children with lower IQ made fewer errors than those with higher IQ, whereas the opposite trend was observed in the control group. Reading ability did not correlate with motor performance in either group. The findings suggest that motor deficits in dyslexia are not uniform but depend on the specific cognitive demands of the task. Difficulties in implicit learning and mental rotation appear linked to dyslexia itself, likely reflecting cerebellar or executive function deficits. Conversely, deficits in motor precision and cognitive flexibility are more strongly associated with lower intelligence levels, regardless of dyslexia status. The study concludes that intelligence plays a crucial role in complex motor skills, potentially acting as a compensatory mechanism for some dyslexic children. These results imply that motor assessments in dyslexia should account for intelligence levels to distinguish between disorder-specific deficits and general cognitive influences.

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• cognitive capacity variation