Dyspraxia: an impairment of the structure and functions of the individual mind : A new study perspective and intervention

Abstract

The term dyspraxia defines an inability to perform a pragmatically oriented action. It doesn't yet have a precise nosographic location. According to the embodied cognition model, this disorder compromises the development of superior mental functions, the construction and the representation of the Self. In our perspective it isn't possible to reduce dyspraxia to a mere disorder of the execution of an intentional gesture and it must be included in a wider spectrum of pathological processes that compromise the functions and the development of individual mind. With the aim to identify early and to support pupils with possible motor difficulties, our contribution intends to propose a computational analysis model of the dyspraxic movements and to define the construction of a technologically assisted diagnostic system for dyspraxia, thanks to the use of an ecological observation grid (GEO-DE). The observation tool was applied in a sample of 525 subjects, aged between 48 and 72 months in order to identify the groups of motor tasks predictive of dyspraxic phenomena. The analysis of the normalized importance of the independent variables showed that the Linguistic Skill (AL) group is the most important group for the forecast of praxic deficits, it was followed in descending order by the AP (Personal Autonomy), GTI (Transitive and Intransitive Gestures), EC (Balance and Coordination) groups. The innovation in this research is to identify which movement patterns are capable of predicting praxic motor dysfunction, for an automated mixed assessment system that includes teacher evaluation.