A study on the effects of knetic brain exercise program on motor skills, coordination, reaction time, attention and balance traits

The purpose of our study is to examine the effects of kinetic brain exercise program on motor skills, coordination, reaction time, attention and balance traits in children who are in development phase. In the study there were 27 boys of 9-10 years of age, 14 of whom were in the experiment group and 13 of whom were in the control group. The effect of kinetic brain exercise program was analyzed during 24 sessions 30 minute twice a week. Before the research began, subjects were studied in terms of their anthropometric qualities (age, height, weight and body-mass index) and their motor skills, their coordination, their attention, their reaction time and their balance were all tested by way of throwing a ball at a target, hand-eye coordination test, dominant recessive hands reaction time test, flamingo balance test, respectively. Furthermore, the boys' school grades of the first and second terms were all taken from the e-school system. The tests were repeated after the 24 session kinetic brain exercise program. According to the results of statistical analysis; when we examined the boys' age, height, weight and BMI values; no statistically significant difference was found between the two groups (p>0.05). In the first values of coordinative qualities, no statistically significant difference was specified between the groups except for the recessive hand reaction time (p>0.05). After the kinetic brain exercise program a statistically significant difference was observed between the pre-test and post-test values of the experiment group in the number and time of mistakes of throwing a ball at a target and hand-eye-coordination (p<0.05). While the scores of throwing a ball at a target and hand-eye coordination increased in the experiment group, they fell in the control group. When the attention variable is evaluated, incorrect reaction times, correct reaction times, working time and the number of error were observed to decrease; however, the attention point was observed to increase; this is not statistically meaningful, though (p>0.05). In the evaluation of academic success, the averages of experiment group increased more than those of the control group. When the difference values of pre-test and post-test, while in the experiment group throwing a ball at a target and hand-eye coordination scores improved significantly, the recessive hand reaction time decreased significantly. In conclusion, the kinetic brain exercise program statistically improved boys' motor skills, the number and time of mistakes in hand-eye coordination. Key Words: Kinetic brain exercise program, Boy, Brain, Motor Skill, Coordination, Reaction Time, Attention, Balance.