Influência da Psicomotricidade em Atletas de Natação Adaptada com Trissomia 21

Abstract

Psychomotricity is a science that has as object of study the Man through its body in movement and in its interaction between its internal and external world. Psychomotricity has three areas of activity: psychomotor education, psychomotor reeducation and psychomotor therapy. It is essential to step in and follow-up the population with Trisomy 21 to promote a motor and intellectual development. However, this study aims to verify if Psychomotricity brings benefits to people with intellectual disabilities that are included in a sport, in this case swimming, which already brings many advantages at motor level due to the characteristics of the water and the positive impact that it has in the human body. The sample consists of five athletes with Trisomy 21, two of whom are in the competition initiation phase and three in the competition. As an instrument of evaluation, was used the Bruininks-Oseretsky Motor Proficiency Test to determine the athletes scores before and after the intervention. Between both evaluations, Psychomotricity sessions were performed during in an eight month period with frequency of two times a week and duration of approximately thirty minutes. Regarding descriptive statistics, means and standard deviation for all variables were calculated using non-parametric Wilcoxon tests. The level of significance was set at p≤0.1. As a conclusion we can see that there were significant changes in the following items: draw lines, transfer coins, unipodal jump, beam balance and abdominal support. In the remaining items, some were very close to showing significant differences. The final conclusion of this study was that the psychomotor intervention had no impact on athletes with Trisomy 21.