A Comparative Study of the Effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation Intervention with Aerobic Exercises on the Cognition of Slow Learner Children

Slow learner children have some problems with cognitive components (memory and attention) and are not able to learn and solve problems like their peers. Familiarity with techniques and instruments affecting the brain and enhancing the cognition is now the main concern of the professionals. This research was conducted to compare the effectiveness of cognitive interventions and aerobic exercises on the cognition of slow learner children.

This study was a semi-experimental research of pretest-posttest control group design. The participants included all the 36 slow learner primary school students of Islamshahr city (in Tehran province) in 2017, which had been selected by convenience sampling. This sample was divided into 3 groups of cognitive rehabilitation, aerobic exercises, and control (12 per group). For 2 months, the interventions were administrated in 50-60 minute sessions, 3 times per week. Finally, all the three groups were administrated the posttest to investigate the effectiveness of the interventions. To measure the intelligence and cognitive characteristics of the students, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (2003) was used. To analyze the data, multivariate analysis of covariance was used.

Results showed that there was a significant difference between the 3 groups in the visual memory component (P = 0.027, F = 2.737, Wilks’ Lambda = 0.273). Also, there was no significant difference between the rehabilitation and aerobic exercises groups in terms of cognitive variables (i.e., verbal and nonverbal working memories and visual verbal and nonverbal spatial processing), but the rehabilitation group had a significant difference (P = 0.014) with the control group in the non-verbal working memory scale (visual memory); i.e.,  both rehabilitation and aerobic groups performed well after intervention, but the cognitive rehabilitation group performed better than the aerobic group.

Because cognitive rehabilitation focus on increasing working memory, according to the results of this research, a cognitive rehabilitation package can be used to increase the visual working memory in slow learner children at schools and rehabilitation centers in order to improve their educational status.