Coincidence Anticipation Performance of Children with Spastic Cerebral Palsy and Nonhandicapped Children

Coincidence anticipation (CA), defined as the abiliity to time a movement coincident with an external event, was examined under six conditions of a computer game. Subjects included 20 children with spastic-type cerebral palsy (SCP), age 7 to 12, and 20 nonhandicapped children matched for age and sex. As hypothesized, children with SCP were significantly less accurate than nonhandicapped children, and increases in task difficulty exaggerated differences between the two groups. Analysis of cognitive strategies provided support that poor cognitive strategies may contribute to difficulty in a perceptual-motor timing task.