The effect of physical education and sports activities on the psychological adaptation level of the educable mentally retarded children

The purpose of this research is to determine the effect of regular physical education and sports activities on the psychological adaptation level of the educable mentally retarded children.The research group is comprised of 16 educable mentally retarded children receiving special education, between the ages of 9 and 11. The children were randomly separated into two groups by impartial assignment approach (practice and control) consisting of eight persons each. As the contents, a special physical education program consisting of warm-up exercises, functional exercises (individual, paired, group staffed, station-racecourses) and sports games (paired, types of helping each other, group competitions and games with rules) was applied to the practice group, 2 days a week and 1 hour each day. The research was figured by an experimental type with preliminary test-final test control group. Hacettepe Emotional Adjustment Scale was used as a data collecting instrument. The data collected at the beginning and final of the practice program as group based with the evaluations of the mothers and special education teachers of the children were compared. ?The Mann-Whitney U? test was used for the independent comparisons, while ?Wilcoxon Test? was used for the dependent comparisons.As a conclusion it was seen, that there is decreasing different of the neurotic and behavioral problems of the children in the practice group, who have regularly attended the physical education and sports activities, in comparison with the control group and the difference is meaningful in favor of the practice group.