Empathy ability in children with motor coordination disorders

Aim: Children with motor coordination problems are known to have emotional difficulties and poor social skills. The current study investigated whether children with poor motor abilities have poor emotion recognition skills when they are compared with typically developing children without movement difficulties. Method: For the examination of empathy ability the Greek version of the self-completed questionnaire Empathy for children and adolescents was used (Empathy Index for children and Adolescents; Bryant, 1982). Participants were divided into two groups of 30 school-age children each with chronological age ranged from 7-15 years. All participants from the Group A were diagnosed with motor difficulties as well as developmental coordination problems. Comparison group was consisted of 30 school- age children without motor coordination disorders or any other developmental disorder. Results: Findings indicated that performance of the children with coordination disorders were characterized by relatively poor scores in comparison with the typically developing children without movement difficulties. Practical implications and recommendation for further research on empathy ability in children with motor difficulties are discussed