Method: The study utilized an experimental-controlled design with 14 children, seven each in either the experimental or the control condition. The experimental condition consisted of physical movements with cognitive functioning demands, while the control condition consisted of physical movements only. The yearly-long experiment was conducted by trained physical education teachers. The children were exposed to their respective training regimen twice a week during the school year. The cognitive functioning was measured using tasks of numeric ordering, pattern recognition, image classification reaction, spatial memory, and visual trace. The children were tested before the intervention to establish a baseline, and tested again immediately after the intervention was completed.
Analysis/Results: The data were reduced to the differences between the two tests to represent the changes. The BoxM and Levene’s tests indicated that the data displayed equal variances on multi-variate (BoxM=20.32, F=.72, p=.77) and univariate levels (F=.35 to 4.37, p=.06 to .56). A MANOVA revealed statistically significant differences (Hotelling’s T=6.84, Fdf=5,8=10,95, p=.002, η2=.87) in all (p ranging from .001 to .04) but the visual trace scores (p=.07) with the children in the experimental condition outperforming those in the control condition.
Conclusions: The results suggest that integrating cognitive functioning tasks with physical movements can strengthen cognitive functioning effectively for the children with intellectual disabilities. The findings further reveal specific positive effects of physical-cognitive integrated training on different cognitive functioning essential to quality of life including numeric ordering, pattern recognition, image classification reaction, and spatial memory. It is recommended that teachers and parents of children with intellectual disabilities use physical-cognitive integration principles in helping their children develop sensory-integration functioning.