Effects of motor skills training program on the cardiac autonomic control in children with developmental coordination disorder: a preliminary study

Figures & data

Table 1. Motor activities performed in the motor skills training programme.

Motor activities	Description
Frisbee	Children were asked to throw a frisbee aiming to achieve the highest score zone of an aim positioned on the ground 4 m away from them
Table tennis	Children were asked to play table tennis on a half folded table tennis table by striking the ball with their racket and hitting the ball onto the folded table. The children had to make eye contact with the ball throughout the whole game
Bowling	Children were asked to roll a ball towards 10 PET bottles filled with water (simulating pins) positioned 4.83 m away. The objective was to score points by knocking down as many pins as possible
Archery	Children were asked to shoot plastic arrows by using a plastic bow at a target positioned 2.30 m away
Balance disc	Children were asked to perform balancing tasks by standing in 14 different static postures on a balance disk. Each position had to be maintained for 15 s
Balance beams	Children were asked to walk on three wooden balance beams of 3 m long each positioned 3 cm above the ground with different thicknesses (3 cm, 4.5 cm and 6 cm). The children had to walk without touching the ground during a total time of 7 min

Table 2. MABC-2 values and cardiac autonomic control indices before and after motor training.

Variables	Pre-test condition Mean (SD)	Post-test condition Mean (SD)	p-value	Effect size
MABC-2 total scores	53.8 (6.9)	68.0 (12.0)	.03	1.54
Variance RR (ms^2)	7182.83 (2099.38)	3415.17 (1310.20)	.02	2.05
SDNN (ms)	82.08 (13.89)	54.57 (10.92)	.02	2.17
RMSSD (ms)	91.2 (44.46)	52.35 (15.63)	.02	0.94
HF (ms^2)	3502.01 (1149.08)	1580.83 (771.85)	.02	1.89

MABC-2: Movement Assessment Battery for Children – Second edition; Variance RR: variance of RR interval time series; SDNN: standard deviation of RR intervals; RMSSD: square root of the mean squared differences of successive RR intervals; HF: high frequency component of RR variability expressed in absolute unit.