Appropriateness of different pedagogical approaches to road safety education for children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD)

Background: In 2016, 29% of pedestrians killed or seriously injured on the roads in Great Britain were under 15 years of age. Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), a chronic disorder affecting the acquisition and execution of motor skills, may be more vulnerable at the roadside than typically developing (TD) children. Current methods used to teach road safety are typically knowledge-based and do not necessarily improve behaviour in real traffic situations. Virtual reality road crossing tasks may be a viable alternative. Aims/Methods: The present study aimed to test the road crossing accuracy of children with and without DCD in virtual reality tasks that varied the viewpoint to simulate the teaching methods currently used in road safety educational programmes. Twenty-one children with DCD and twenty-one age and gender matched TD peers were required to locate the safest road crossing sites in two conditions: allocentric (aerial viewpoint) and egocentric (first-person viewpoint). Procedures/Outcomes: All children completed both conditions and were required to navigate either themselves or an avatar across the road using the safest crossing route. The primary outcome was accuracy defined as the number of trials, out of 10, on which the child successfully identified and used the safest crossing route. Results/Conclusions: Children with DCD performed equally poorly in both conditions, while TD children were significantly more accurate in the egocentric condition. This difference cannot be explained by self-reported prior road crossing education, practice or confidence. Implications: While TD children may benefit from the development of an egocentric virtual reality road crossing task, multimodal methods may be needed to effectively teach road safety to children with DCD. What this paper adds? Between July and September 2016, 29% of all UK pedestrian casualties were children under the age of 15 years (Department for Transport, 2016). As only 19% of the population fall within this age range (Office for National Statistics, 2012) it suggests that this group is over-represented in these statistics. Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), a chronic disorder affecting the acquisition and execution of motor skills, may be more vulnerable at the roadside than typically developing (TD) children due to differences in perceptual ability. Road safety education is less effective than is desirable; current methods are typically knowledgehttp://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.ridd. 2017.08. 010 Received 5 December 2016; Received in revised form 21 August 2017; Accepted 22 August 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: catherine.purcell@southwales.ac. uk (C. Purcell). Research in Developmental Disabilities 70 (2017) 85–93 Available online 15 September 2017 0891-4222/ © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/). MARK based and do not necessarily improve behaviour in real traffic situations. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has systematically measured the road crossing accuracy of primary and secondary school aged children with and without DCD in a virtual environment using varying perspectives: allocentric and egocentric. Our results showed that children with DCD performed equally poorly on both tasks, whilst the TD children performed better on the egocentric task. This between group difference cannot be attributed to task understanding, or explained by self-reported history of road crossing education, practice or perceived confidence. This result implies that, while TD children may benefit from the development of an egocentric virtual reality road crossing educational programme, multimodal methods may be needed to effectively teach road safety to children with DCD. Given the inefficacy of current road safety education, and the likely vulnerability of children with DCD at the roadside, we believe that this study is of the utmost importance.