The comparison of physical, mental and compound training effect on motor development of boys with Developmental coordination disorder

Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) affects 5–6% of school-aged children. The impacts of DCD are also not just confined to daily activities and educational function, but are associatedwithpoor physicalhealth,fitness, psychologicalandsocialoutcomes.The aim of this study was to compare effectiveness of different type of selected training programs (physical, mental and compound)to investigate the best intervention method in order to improve motor skills performance of children with developmental coordination disorder.

This empirical study, pre and post-test with control group design consisted of 55 school age (9-10 year old) boys diagnosed to have developmental coordination disorder according to developmental coordination disorderquestionnaire)DCDQ-07) and movement assessment battery for children second edition (MABC-2). The subjects were selected based on a degree of homogeneity of their answers to visual vividness questionnaire and accidentally divided to 4 groups, 3 training groups (physical, mental and compound) each group (n=14) and the control group (n=13). The programs include selected physical training in group, individual mental training conducting PETTLEP (physical, environment, task, timing, learning, emotion, perspective) method and a compound training, the one gives a training order in different turns (physical+ mental and vice versa). No intervention was assigned to control group. To modify cognitive and arousal effects induced by training order, counterbalance method was recruited. All measures were administered pre and post an 8-week 3 times a week training program involved 24 sessions of 45 min each.To identify the changes in motor skills performance associated with trainings Ancova and paired sample T-Test were conducted to detectdifferences between the pre-and post-test, after making sure of normal distribution of data utilizing Shapiro-Wilks normality test, Levene’s test was used for testing equality of variances and Post-Hoc comparisons were carried out with Bonfrroni test (set at 0.05). All data were analyzed using SPSS19 for windows.

Mean±SD score on all3training groups (mental, physical and compound) respectively indicates significant improvement (p<0.001) in motor skills performance from pre-test (58.851±4.102, 57.503±6.823, 57.793±4.357) to post-test (62.231±3.671, 63.502±4.235, 65.794±2.773). Within group comparisons implies that compound training significantly (p<0.05) caused more effect than the others.

This study set out with the aim of comparisoneffectiveness of different type of selected training programs (physical, mental and compound) to investigate the best intervention method in order to improve the motor skill performance of children with developmental coordination disorder. The result determined significant improvement in motor skill performance that could be reached by using physical and mental trainings for 9-10 year old boys who had developmental coordination disorder, and compound training might be the best way to facilitate motor development in DCD children. Literature focuses on measurement of impairment and description of intervention approaches for individual children. Nevertheless, some studies are known about the principles that should guide best practice and service delivery for children with DCD as a population though. This study might help to develop training protocol for DCD children based on more document, which improves our knowledge of both physical and mental trainings functions that would be beneficial for DCD children and therapists.