The effectiveness of exercise intervention on inhibitory control in children with developmental coordination disorder: using a visuospatial attention paradigm as a model.
Ten weeks of school-based table-tennis practice improved both attention control and motor skills in children with coordination delays.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers set up a 10-week table-tennis club for 9- and 10-year-olds with developmental coordination disorder. Kids practiced three times a week right in their school gym. A second group of similar children stayed on the usual PE schedule to act as the comparison.
The team wanted to know if the fast eye-hand game could sharpen both motor skills and the children's ability to stop a wrong response.
What they found
At the end of the term, the table-tennis group showed better control of their attention and smoother motor performance than the no-training group. The gains were large enough to see on standard tests.
In plain words, the kids who played ping-pong got better at catching the ball and at catching their own mistakes.
How this fits with other research
Giagazoglou et al. (2013) saw the same kind of boost when children with intellectual disability bounced on a trampoline for 12 weeks. Both studies tell us that playful, whole-body exercise can lift motor skills in children with delays.
Chang et al. (2014) got similar fine-motor gains with nothing more than a computer keyboard. Together these papers show the activity itself can be cheap or even free; what matters is lots of fun repetitions.
So et al. (2018) pushed the idea further by using a robot to coach gestures. Their tech approach and the low-tech paddle both closed developmental gaps, giving you a menu from high- to no-budget options.
Why it matters
You do not need fancy gear to help kids with motor or attention problems. Pick any engaging, fast-turn activity the child enjoys—table tennis, trampoline, or typing games—and run it three times a week for ten minutes or more. Track one simple motor or self-control target, and you are likely to see a real-world payoff in a month or two.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have been demonstrated to show a deficit of inhibitory control in volitional shifts of attention. The aim of this study was to use ecological intervention to investigate the efficacy of table-tennis training on treating both problems with attentional networks and motor disorder in children with DCD. Forty-three children aged 9-10 years old were screened using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children and divided into DCD (n=27) and typically developing (TD, n=16) groups. Children with DCD were then quasi-randomly assigned to either a DCD-training group who underwent a ten-week table-tennis training program with a frequency of 3 times a week or a DCD non-training group. Before and after training, the capacity of inhibitory control was examined with the endogenous Posner paradigm task for DCD and TD groups. Table-tennis training resulted in significant improvement of cognitive and motor functions for the children with DCD. The study demonstrated that exercise intervention employed within the school setting can benefit the inhibitory control and motor performance in children with DCD. However, future research efforts should continue to clarify whether the performance gains could be maintained over time.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2009 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.05.001