Effectiveness of perceptual motor games Amount of attention in children with developmental coordination disorder

Approximately 5-6% of school-aged children suffer from developmental coordination disorder (DCD), which is a neuromotor disability in which a child’s motor coordination difficulties significantly interfere with activities of daily living or academic achievement. These children typically have difficulty with fine and/or gross motor skills, with motor performance that is usually slower, less accurate, and more variable than that of their peers. The types of difficulties children with DCD experience have been well-documented. Self-care challenges include difficulty with dressing, managing buttons and zippers, tying shoelaces, using a knife and fork, and toileting. Difficulty with school related tasks can negatively impact academic achievement, e.g., copying, drawing, painting, printing, handwriting, using scissors, organizing, and finishing work on time. Physical education can also be affected, as children with DCD have trouble throwing, catching, or kicking a ball, running, skipping, and playing sports. Despite average or above intelligence, children with DCD have poorer school outcomes than peers. Beyond the motor domain, children with DCD can experience significant secondary emotional and mental health concerns, e.g., low self-worth and self-esteem, high rates of anxiety and depression and emotional/ behavioral disorders. Thus, DCD has far-reaching effects in multiple domains “with considerable consequences in daily life”. DCD often co-occurs with other developmental disorders, most commonly attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Up to 50% of children with DCD have been shown also to meet criteria for ADHD. Attention is a set of excellent cognitive and meta-cognitive abilities that contribute to daily living or academic achievement. Lack of attention in children with DCD affects performance. A variety of different treatment approaches for DCD exist. Perceptual – motor activities is one of approaches for the treatment of DCD. Since that games can increases the attention of children with DCD, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive movement games on the extent of attention (selective attention, sustained attention, divided attention and shifting attention) of children with coordination disorder. The study employed a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design. The population consisted of all first-grade girls with DCD in Isfahan in the 2013-2014 school year. In order to conduct this study 30 children with developmental coordination disorder were recruited through to a multi-stage random sampling. The participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups in equal numbers. The research instruments were Conner’s questionnaires and DCD Q questionnaires. Finally, the experimental group received 16 sessions of Perceptual motor games-based intervention. Analysis of Covariance (ANOCVA) was used to test the research hypotheses. The results showed that early interventions based games perceptual – motor is effect on Amount of attention (selective attention, sustained attention, divided attention, shifting attention) in children with developmental coordination disorder (p>0.01). Considering the importance of the role of attention in the learning and educational achievement of children, especially children with developmental coordination disorder, it is desirable that the diagnosis and intervention take place as soon as possible and the interactions of perceptual motion games indirectly accompanied by joy and attractiveness he does.