Factors of successful movement coordination in students with mild intellectual disability

Abstract

There are many studies on the assessment of factors which determine the quality of making movements, including coordination and precision. Basic and complex motor activities directly depend on neuropsychological abilities. Researchers in this field point to significant factors which indicate successful coordination of movements, however, only few tried to single out the most important one. The main aim of this research was to determine whether there was a relation between spatial orientation, attention, and verbal memory in movement coordination, and which of the mentioned functions had the greatest influence on coordination and precision of movements in students with mild intellectual disability. Seventy three participants, aged between 7 and 12, were assessed by Ball-Foot-Wall Test for the assessment of coordination and precision of movements, Cancellation Task for attention vigilance assessment, Beter-Cragin Test for spatial orientation, and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test for the assessment of verbal memory and forced recognition. The obtained results showed that the most significant factors of movement coordination were forced recognition β=0.269; p=0.046), attention vigilance β=0.256; p=0.051) and spatial orientation (β=0.246; p=0.057). Practical implications point out the necessity of designing educational coordination training with the aim to increase students' potential to make movements.

Keywords

• attention
• forced recognition
• spatial orientation
• intellectual disability
• coordination of movement