An Experimental Study on the Effect of Exercise Intervention on the Executive Functions of Primary Students with and without Learning Difficulties

The experiment is intended to explore the influences of the designed basketball intervention plans on the executive functions of primary students with and without learning difficulties by comparing the differences in their executive functions before and after the intervention,to reveal the relation between exercises and executive functions of primary students with learning disabilities,in order to provide primary schools with effective exercise intervention programs which promote executive functions of primary students with learning disabilities.Following the standard of defining primary students with learning difficulties,the study selected students both with and without learning difficulties as participants,The experimental group has48participants(23of them with difficulty,and the other 25 without difficulty),and the control group has 45participants(22of them with difficulty,and the other 23 without difficulty).The designed basketball intervention plans are applied in the physical education class(PE class)to practice exercise intervention on the experiment groups with moderate exercise intensity(220-age)x(60% ~69%),for 10 weeks,three times a week,30 minutes each time.Employing three-way repeated measure ANVA,The experiment found(1)Different groups of primary students with learning difficulties differ greatly in their executive functions before and after the intervention,with the reaction time of the inhibition,refresh and transformation functions of primary students in the experiment groups decreasing obviously while that of primary students in the control groups not changing obviously,(2)Primary students without learning difficulties in different groups differ significantly in their executive functions before and after the intervention,with the reaction time of the inhibition,refresh and transformation functions of primary students in the experiment groups decreasing obviously while that of primary students in the control groups not changing obviously,(3)The executive functions of primary students with learning difficulties in the experiment groups improve obviously more than those of primary students without learning difficulties in the experiment groups.The conclusion is that the exercise intervention has positive influences on the executive functions of both primary students with learning difficulties and those without learning difficulties,and that primary students with learning difficulties in the experiment group improve a lot more than those without learning difficulties in the experiment group.