Background: Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) affects movement coordination, but little is known about how the condition impacts the behaviours of car drivers and pedestrians.
Aims: This study examined the self-reported driving and pedestrian behaviours of adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD).
Methods and procedures: One hundred and twenty-eight participants (62 adults with DCD vs. 66 TD adults) responded to an online survey asking them about their perceptions of confidence and self-reported driving and pedestrian behaviours in the real-world.
Outcomes and results: Results suggested that adults with DCD felt less confident and reported more lapses in attention (e.g., forgetting where their car was parked) and errors (e.g., failing to check their mirrors prior to a manoeuvre) when driving compared to typically developed (TD) adults. Adults with DCD also reported feeling less confident and reported less adherence to road traffic laws (e.g., not waiting for a green crossing signal before crossing the road) when walking as pedestrians.
Conclusions and implications: These results offer some much-needed insight into the behaviours of those with DCD outside of the laboratory environment and underline the need for research investigating the driving and pedestrian behaviours of individuals with DCD in 'real-world' contexts.
Copyright: © 2024 Shipley et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.