GEO-DE (Griglia Ecologica Osservativa per la Disprassia Evolutiva) Nuovo strumento per gli insegnanti della scuola d’infanzia

Abstract

Background. There is currently a terminological confusion between the Developmental Dyspraxia, the Developmental Coordination Disorder and the Specific Developmental Disorder of Motor Function. Developmental Dyspaxia is a congenital disorder or an acquired disorder from a young age characterized by an impairment in the intentional motor planning, in the monitoring and in the controlling purposeful movement. Neural correlates. The neural substrates involved in the developmental dyspaxia are: the parietal lobe, the cerebellum, the corpus callosum, the mirror neurons, the dorsal patway and the frontal cortex. Objective. The aim of the study is to identify the significant clinical indices of developmental dyspaxia in order to construct an ecological observational grid (GEO-DE) for the early detection of children with mobility impairment between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Creation and structure. The grid is proposed as a tool. It is based on real school experiences of the child through play activities. Grounding the grid in real life experiences will increase its accessibility for educators. Actually, the instrument is in the operational phase and was conducted on a sample of 165 children from varied primary schools of the Neapolitan territory. This was in order to test the validity and effectiveness of the tool. Future directions. The final objective of this study is to replace the paper grid with an artificial intelligence support to enable earlier detection of motor disorders.

Keywords

• developmental dyspaxia diagnosis