Effect of Motor Intervention In Underfed Children With Development Backwardness

Abstract

Current research evaluates the effects of a motor intervention in socialization, language usage and fine-wide motricity in underfed children. Case study was performed with children in the outskirts of a Brazilian state capital city. Weight-height, height-age and weight-age indexes evaluated the nutritional conditions. Denver II triage test (global development and four dominions: personal-social, language, fine and wide motricity) evaluated the neuropsychomotor development. Seven children, aged from 0 to 6 years, were divided into two groups: intervention (GI) and control (GC) group. Intervention, performed in 12 half-hour sessions once a week, consisted of simple, low-cost games adapted to the children´s social, economical and cultural reality. GI children had a better performance or maintained scores during the four evaluated dominions, coupled to the global development score in which they had received the “abnormal” classification during the pre-intervention period and “normal” in the post-intervention one. Opposite results were obtained in GC in which the children showed a lowering or maintenance of scores in the four dominions and kept the classification “abnormal” in the global development score during the post-control period. Intervention caused a gain in neuropsychomotor development of GI children and made them supersede the influence of risk factors to which they were exposed together with the GC children.