Transfer of motor and strategy learning in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD): A scoping review

Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a developmental disorder that affects the learning and execution of motor skills. Little is known about their ability to transfer their learning, i.e. to adapt prior knowledge to new tasks (Hattie & Donoghue, 2016). This is an important issue in these children, both to better understand how they can adapt initial learning to new tasks, and to develop interventions that will enable them to transfer their knowledge into their daily lives. The aim of this scoping review is to assess the body and nature of the existing literature on transfer of learning in children with DCD. After a search in 4 databases, 58 publications meeting the inclusion criteria were included. Among the studies, 18 aimed at measuring transfer, other can be interpreted as measuring transfer of learning even if transfer is not explicitly mentioned by the authors. The results show that children with DCD seem to have difficulty transferring their motor learning when the transfer tasks are far from the trained tasks but seem able to transfer their learning when the transfer tasks remain close, however they can transfer cognitive strategies to more distant transfer tasks. Future research is needed to systematically assess different aspects of transfer, with the aim of proposing effective interventions for children with DCD. •Transfer in DCD children shows how they can adapt their initial learning.•It is important to elaborate interventions that permit transfer to daily life.•Transfer in DCD children is assessed with various paradigms and on multiple skills.•Theoretical frameworks of transfer in children with DCD differ across studies.