Developmental coordination disorder and its cause: The road less travelled

We critically review the research literature that seeks to focus on the possible cause of children diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). In so doing we contrast the traditional information processing (IP) approach as a model to explain the causal factors that account for the motor deficits present in children with DCD, with a dynamical systems (DS) account which argues that coordination deficits in children with DCD is less to do with problems of poor internal models (a cornerstone of IP theory) and more with a degrading of perception-action coupling. We review and comment on the extant empirical data and conclusions of both approaches. We conclude that the data for an IP explanation is weak and a reconsideration of DCD is in order with respect to the underlying cause of this issue.