The Effect of External Focus of Attention Instruction and Autonomy Support on learning of an Aiming Task in Mentally Retarded children

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of external focus of attention instruction and autonomy support on learning of an aiming task in mentally retarded children. Therefore, 48 children with the age range of 10-14 years among all of the mentally retarded children of Ahvaz, were selected by convenience sampling. Participants performed 10 throws as a pre-test and afterward, according to their scores on pre-test, they were equally divided into four groups (external attention, autonomy support, external attention-autonomy support, control group). The acquisition phase consisted of throwing 100 gram beanbags into a goal that was mounted at a distance of 2 meters from the participants on the wall. Ten minute after the last acquisition block, the participants performed 10 trials as post-test. 48 hours after the acquisition phase, retention test (10 trials) was performed to examine the learning effects of the participants. The data analyzed by Mix-ANOVA 2×2×2 on acquisition phase and two-way ANOVA 2×2 on retention data with using SPSS22 at significant level P≤0.05. The results of this study showed that in the acquisition phase, all of four groups gradually increased their accuracy (P≤0.05) and the external attention+autonomy support group gain the best scores in this phase. Also Results showed significant difference between the groups in the retention test (P≤0.05) and the external attention+autonomy support group presented the greatest throwing accuracy. Therefore, it is suggested that combination of autonomy support and external attention should be used to improve the performance and learning in mentally retarded children.