Study of Children with Intellectual Disability and Physical Fitness

The purpose of this study was to determine if training intervention on throwing improves accuracy among children with intellectual disabilities. The second purpose of this study was to determine if showing visual aids would affect the throwing accuracy of children with ID. The third purpose of this study was to determine if teaching correct stance and posture effect the throwing accuracy among children with ID. Throwing skills were measured by using a modified dart board during pre and posttesting. The subjects were 17 children with ID that were recruited from one elementary school located in a small southeastern U.S. city. The children were diagnosed as having various levels of Autism, Down syndrome, and other IDs. All of the participants received one hour of the same training per week. The training consisted of two throwing exercises. One of the exercises involved throwing a bean bag into the center of a hula hoop placed on the floor at 5, 7.5, and 10 ft. away. The other training exercise involved throwing tennis balls at colored circular objects placed on a board that was mounted on the wall. The subjects were randomly selected into either the experimental or control group.