Abstract

Whereas movements stem from the child’s genetic endowment, a repertoire of praxic lexicon is a by-product of the child’s cultural environment and social interaction. The different ontogenetic trajectories of the two systems are reflected both in their internal architecture as well as in their functional role. Yet, they are so deeply intertwined in the child’s daily life that, teasing apart the role of each component in pathology, is far from a simple and easy task. Furthermore, both movements and praxias appear to be simultaneously, though quite often differentially, impaired in the clinical landscape, thus turning the task of a clinical diagnosis either into a conundrum or into a quarrel of quibbles. I argue that the current knowledge on the neural architecture of movements and praxias may lead to more selective and finer-tuned assessment tools which, in turn, may help elucidating some of the connections between develpmental apraxia and the varieties of developmental motor disorders