Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 faculty member of SSRC
2 Department of Motor Behavior, Central Tehran Branch, Azad Islamic University, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Motor Behavior, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
4 Department of Sport Management, Central Tehran Branch, Azad Islamic University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of cognitive rehabilitation, purposeful-movement plays and combined interventions on cognitive flexibility and motor coordination among children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Sixty girls with DCD in the age range of 7 to 10 years were identified based on the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (Parents’ version) and the Lincon-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency and randomly assigned into four groups of 15 individuals (rehabilitation, play, combined, and control). The groups participated in an eight-week experimental period (24 sessions of 45 minutes, three sessions per week) and their cognitive flexibility and motor coordination in pre- and post-test were measured using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Lincon-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency. The results of mixed factorial analysis of variance with a 2 × 4 design (time × group) and follow-up comparisons showed that cognitive flexibility and motor coordination improved significantly in all three experimental groups (P < 0.05). Improvement of cognitive flexibility (perseveration error) in the combined intervention group compared to the play group (P = 0.01) and also improvement motor coordination in the combined intervention (P < 0.001) and play (P < 0.001) groups were higher than the rehabilitation group. In other cases, no significant difference was observed between the experimental groups (P < 0.05). Based on these findings, the combined intervention of cognitive rehabilitation and purposeful-movement plays compared to the single-approach interventions, is more effective for multiple therapeutic goals, such as simultaneous improvement of cognitive flexibility and motor coordination, in DCD.
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