Historically, the teachers, researchers and caregivers of mentally retarded children and adults paid their attention to intellectual development, while the role of physical fitness stayed uncertain. The interest in recreation activity has been increased in 1990s however, the practitioners are still reluctant to use fitness programs in their students’ curricula, although motor skills development had been emphasized.
Researchers Drs Cabler-Halle, James W. Halle, and Barry Chung at the University of Illinois in their review tried to find causal relationships between aerobic fitness and improvements in mental, emotional, ans social scores of retarded children and adults.
They examines (1) the effects of aerobic exercise on intellectual, behavioral, and self-conceptual changes in persons with mental retardation and comcludes that in spite of many methodical flaus and insufficiant statistical data, a clear effect of improvement was observed — often immediately — after aerovic exercising for as little as 10 minutes or as long as 2 hours. Few data have been reported positive effects of aerobic exercise on IQ scores. It’s been suggested (2) that children with developmental delays are more sensitive to the effects of interventions designed to affect mental function than individuals who are not developmentally delayed
The authors concluded “Perhaps physical fitness programming for those with developmenral disabilities would have wider appeal and application if it were embedded in the bTOadeT contexl of psychological and behavioral change (i.e., engagement in exercise produces generalized changes beyond direct improvement in physical well-being).”
Sources:
1. Res Devel Disabil Vol. 14, pp. 359-386, 1993
2. Educ Psychol Rev (2008) 20:111–131
Religion and attention allocation
The Netherlands and UK researchers reported their results of attention task studies (Religion and the Attentional Blink: Depth of faith predicts depth of the blink. Frontiers in Cognition, September 2010). They worked with two groups similar in cultural upbringing, with no group differences for age, mood, personality traits and IQ. One groups consisted of Atheistic, the other of Dutch Calvinists. The tool researchers measured what they called “Attention Allocation” was Attention Blink (AB):
Participants had to identify and report two digits presented in a rapid stream of letter distractors. The second digit was presented wither immediately after the first, or could be separated by several distraction cards.
The First digit was reported equally well by both groups with more correct results when the two digits were separated by longer time lags. However, the second digit, though equally well reported by short and long lags, was correct in 75% presentations in the Atheist group but only in 60% presentations in the Dutch Calvinists group.
The authors offer a very interesting discussion from the standpoints of East-West, collectivistic-individualistic, and wholistic-reductionistic cognitive differences between theri experimental groups.
The Netherlands and UK researchers reported their results of attention task studies (Religion and the Attentional Blink: Depth of faith predicts depth of the blink. Frontiers in Cognition, September 2010).
They worked with two groups similar in cultural upbringing, with no group differences for age, mood, personality traits and IQ. One groups consisted of Atheistic, the other of Dutch Calvinists. The tool researchers measured what they called “Attention Allocation” was Attention Blink (AB):
Participants had to identify and report two digits presented in a rapid stream of letter distractors. The second digit was presented wither immediately after the first, or could be separated by several distraction cards.
The First digit was reported equally well by both groups with more correct results when the two digits were separated by longer time lags. However, the second digit, though equally well reported by short and long lags, was correct in 75% presentations in the Atheist group but only in 60% presentations in the Dutch Calvinists group.
The authors offer a very interesting discussion from the standpoints of East-West, collectivistic-individualistic, and wholistic-reductionistic cognitive differences between theri experimental groups.
