Effect of Aerobic Training on Verbal Working Memory, Cognitive Flexibility and Visual Perception in Patients with Written Disorder

Written disorder is the highest and most complex language skill disorder in humans, and its patients often have problems in executive functions such as verbal working memory, cognitive flexibility, and visual perception. Therefore, the present research aimed to determine aerobic training on verbal working memory, cognitive flexibility, and visual perception in patients with the written disorder.

This study was quasi-experimental with a pretest, posttest, and one-month follow-up design with the control group. The research population was second and third-grade elementary students with the written disorder of Mashhad city in the 2018-19 academic years. The research sample was 24 participants who were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly with lottery replaced into two equal groups. The experimental group received 20 sessions of 45 minutes the aerobic training, and the control group did not receive any training. Data were collected using Stanford-Binet verbal working memory, Wisconsin cognitive flexibility, and Frostig visual perception tests and analyzed with statistical tests in SPSS software version 25.

The results showed that the experimental and control groups in the pretest phase did not have a significant difference in terms of verbal working memory, cognitive flexibility, and visual perception (P > 0.05), but in the posttest and follow-up phases, there were significant differences in terms of all three variables (P<0.05). Also, aerobic training compared to the control group led to increased verbal working memory, cognitive flexibility, and visual perception in patients with written disorders. The results were maintained in the follow-up phase (P < 0.05).

According to the present study results, planning to use aerobic training and other training methods is essential to improve executive functions. As a result, professionals and therapists can use aerobic training to improve administrative processes, especially verbal working memory, cognitive flexibility, and visual perception.