The Effect of Mental Imagery and Physical Practice on Tracking Task inChildren with Developmental Coordination Disorder

Imagery can be defined as the use of all the senses to recreate or construct an experience in the mind. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of mental imagery and physical exercise on tracking task in children with developmental coordination disorder. Participants were 30 female students with developmental coordination disorder (mean age 8.22 ± 0.84) who were randomly divided into 3 groups of mental imagery, physical exercise and control group. During the study, the two groups of mental imagery and physical exercise performed their exercises for 18 sessions (17-20 minutes) and the control group performed their daily activities. At the end, all subjects performed the tracking task. The results of combined analysis of variance test 2 (time: pre-test, post-test) * 3 (group: mental imagery, physical training and control) showed experimental groups in all components of the tracking task (total time on target, Consecutive time on target, distance from target and speed) performed better than the control group and a significant difference was observed from pre-test to post-test. Based on the results of independent t-test, no significant difference was observed between the two groups of mental imagery and physical Practice.