***The present project aims to test whether children affected by a disease of the motor system (the Developmental Coordination Disorder) show a deficit in action word processing***
Processing action-language affects the planning and execution of motor acts, which
suggests that the motor system might be involved in action-language understanding.
However, this claim is hotly debated. For the first time, we compared the processing of
action-verbs in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), a disease that
specifically affects the motor system, with children with a typical development (TD). We
administered two versions of a go/no-go task in which verbs expressing either hand,
foot or abstract actions were presented. We found that only when the semantic content
of a verb has to be retrieved, TD children showed an increase in reaction times if the
verb involved the same effector used to give the response. In contrast, DCD patients did
not show any difference between verb categories irrespective of the task. These findings
suggest that the pathological functioning of the motor system in individuals with DCD
also affects language processing.
ABSTRACT of **Mirabella G, Del Signore S, Lakens D, Averna R, Penge R, Capozzi F.** *Developmental Coordination Disorder Affects the Processing of Action-Related Verbs*. **Front Hum Neurosci. 2017 Jan 10;10:661. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00661.**
These data have been taken by the equipe led by Giovanni Mirabella in Rome (Italy). Data on controls had been collected in a primary school (Contardo Ferrini). Data on patients had been collected at Child Neuropsychiatry Institute, via dei Sabelli 108, Sapienza University of Rome.
