Effectiveness of cognitive-motor intervention on physical literacy and enjoyment of physical activity of female students

Since the expansion of new technologies, the development of media literacy, and the lack of sufficient movement of people have led to motor illiteracy, the use of new educational approaches can increase the level of children's physical literacy.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of cognitive-motor intervention on physical literacy and enjoyment of physical activity among female students in a two-month follow-up plan.

The present research is semi-experimental. The statistical population included female students aged 10 to 12 years old in Yazd city, 40 of them (20 in the experimental group, 20 in the control group) using the purposeful sampling method and performing physical literacy tests and completing the enjoyment of physical activity questionnaire by Moore et al. (2001) participated in this research in the form of pre-test, post-test, and follow-up. The experimental group participated in the cognitive-motor program for 18 sessions, 3 sessions per week, and the control group did their usual activities and did not receive any intervention. Data analysis was performed using mixed analysis of variance with repeated measurement and independent t-test at a significance level of p≤0.05.

The results showed that the participants of the experimental group performed better in physical literacy and enjoyment of physical activity in the post-test and follow-up than the pre-test, but in the control group, there was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores. Also, comparing the groups, the results showed that the participants of the experimental group performed better than the control group in terms of motivation in physical literacy and enjoyment of physical activity.

According to the findings of the present study, cognitive-motor intervention can be used to develop physical literacy and increase the enjoyment of physical activity in female students.