Effects of taekwon-do training on children's working memory

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of participation in Taekwondo training on working memory in children aged 10 and 11. In the province of Kocaeli, 74 children between the ages of 10-11 who were just started the Taekwondo and 28 children who did not take part in any training regularly, were participated. The Ethics Committee approval was obtained from Hitit University Non-Interventional Researches Ethics Committee (2019-84) and the written institution permission was obtained from the sports club where the training sessions were held. The families of the children, who voluntarily accepted to participate in the study, were asked to sign the written consent form. The exercises were practiced 90 minutes, 3 days a week for 8 weeks. 37 children were trained kyorugi techniques and rules. The other 37 children were taught poomsea hand movements and rules in training. Working Memory Scale, developed by Ergül, Yilmaz and Demir (2018), was used to collect the data. Since it was seen that the assumption of normality was not met as a result of Shapiro-Wilk test analysis, Mann-Whitney U and One-Sample Wilcoxon tests were used for the analyzes. The subjects were divided into three groups; 37 (18 boys and 19 girls) as Poomsae, 37 (15 boys and 22 girls) as Kyorugi and 28 (14 boys and 14 girls) as control. As a result of the analysis of the data, it was found that there was a statistically significant decrease in the working memory scores of the subjects in the Kyorugi group, while the working memory in the Poomsae group was positively affected and the scores increased. Control group had no significant differences between tests. It was concluded that Poomsae training affected children's working memory positively but more studies are needed to investigate the causes of this impairment in the Kyorugi group