Motor-Based Interventions in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials.

Children with developmental coordination disorder often struggle with everyday motor tasks like handwriting or catching a ball, and physiotherapists have long used different training approaches to try to help. This systematic review and meta-analysis pooled 32 randomised controlled trials comparing motor-based interventions, broadly grouped into task-oriented, process-oriented, or combined approaches, against control conditions. Overall, motor-based interventions were associated with significant improvements in standardized motor test scores and various body functions, including balance, coordination, and sensory processing, as well as activity performance. However, no significant improvements were detected for children's participation in daily life or for psychosocial outcomes like confidence or wellbeing.

Task-oriented training in particular stood out for improving motor skills, balance and activity performance, though this finding draws on a more limited set of studies than the overall analysis, and the effects of process-oriented or combined strategies on some outcomes remain unclear due to the small number of trials available.

If your child has developmental coordination disorder, which affects coordination and everyday motor skills like writing or sports, you may wonder whether structured movement-based therapy actually helps. This review combined results from 32 randomised trials testing different types of motor training programmes for children with this condition. The pooled evidence found that these training programmes were linked to improvements in motor skill test scores and physical functions such as balance, coordination and sensory processing.

Children's performance in daily activities also tended to improve. However, the review did not find clear evidence that these programmes improved how much children participated in life situations, or psychological aspects like self-esteem or social confidence. One approach, called task-oriented training which focuses on practicing specific functional tasks, showed particularly consistent benefits for motor skills, balance and activity performance, though this comes from fewer studies than the overall analysis, so it carries more uncertainty.

The review does not tell us which specific programme format works best for any individual child.

This is a summary of research, not medical advice. Talk to your own healthcare provider about anything affecting your care.

For clinicians weighing which motor-based intervention style to use with children who have developmental coordination disorder, this meta-analysis of 32 randomised controlled trials offers a useful synthesis across task-oriented, process-oriented, and combined task- and process-oriented approaches. The headline finding is a large pooled effect on overall motor skills (g = 1.00, 95% CI 0.48 to 1.52, p < 0.001), alongside significant moderate-to-large effects across body function domains including balance (g = 0.57), cognitive function (g = 1.53), muscle function (g = 0.91), coordination (g = 0.47), visual function (g = 0.61), and sensory processing measures, plus activity performance (g = 0.71). Notably, pooled effects on participation and psychosocial outcomes (g = 0.71, 95% CI -0.08 to 1.50, p = 0.079) were not statistically significant, indicating that improved motor or body function scores did not translate into detected gains in real-world participation or psychosocial wellbeing in this pooled evidence.

Subgroup analyses point toward task-oriented training showing the most consistent benefits across motor skills, balance and activity, with combined strategies also benefiting overall motor skills, but these subgroup estimates rest on fewer trials and should be interpreted with more caution than the overall pooled result. The review does not establish which specific protocol, dosage, or delivery format is optimal, nor does it clarify why participation and psychosocial gains lagged behind functional improvements, leaving these as open questions for practice and future trial design.