Investigation of the effects of eight- week step aerobic exercises on motor skills in autistic and mentally disabled individuals

This study aims to investigate the development of motor skills in individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities through an eight-week step aerobics exercise program, and to determine the effectiveness of this development between the groups. The study consists of 26 disabled individuals living in the Balıkesir province, selected using the purposive sampling method. "Personal Information Form", "Brockport Physical Fitness Test (BFUT)" and "Eurofit Physical Fitness Test Protocol" were used as data collection tools in the research. The normality distribution of the data was determined using the Shapiro Wilk test. It was determined that the data showed a normal distribution. Paired samples t-test was used for within-group comparisons for the data meeting normality assumptions; Wilcoxon Signed-rank test was used for within-group comparisons for the data not meeting normality assumptions. Independent samples t test was used for the data meeting normality assumptions for between-group comparisons; Mann Whitney-U Test" was used for the data not meeting normality assumptions. The percentage change formula [(Post-Test-Pre-Test)/Pre-Test]*100 was used to detect the difference in comparisons. The results were evaluated at a 95% confidence interval and a significance level of 𝑝≤0.05. IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0 and Excel database were utilized for data analysis in the study. As a result, it was found that eight weeks of aerobic exercise statistically significantly improved motor skills in individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities, with no significant differences observed between groups in inter-group comparisons. .