The Effect of Balance Training on Reaction Time in Children with Mental Retardation

The purpose of this study was to find out the effect of balance training on reaction times in children with mental retardation. To achieve this purpose, the sample consisted of 22 healthy school aged children 8–13 years old (mean age = 10.23±1.43 years) with mild mental retardation recruited randomly from a special primary school in Turkey. Participants were randomly assigned either to an experimental group (n =11) or a control group (n =11). The experiment group attended a 10 weeks balance training intervention program consisting of 45-min sessions, while the control group followed the regular school schedule. Reaction time was assessed using RT apparatus manufactured by Anand Agencies, Pune. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was performed to compare the pre and post training measures of both groups separately. The Mann Whitney U Test was used to identify possible differences between the exercise and control groups. The results of the present study revealed significant difference between the pre-intervention mean values with that of the post-intervention of visual reaction time for study group (P=0.004).