Ludotherapy Through Basketball - a Means of Kinetic Stimulation for Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

Motor education through basketball contributes to the development of manual coordination, balance and laterality, organization in space and time, the latter focusing on the body scheme that children are primarily concerned with at primary school. Practicing, by using the simple means of basketball, improves the primordial sensory skills; sophisticated and global motor activities improve the basic motor skills and facilitate the perceptual-motor integration, which is the starting point for the cognitive functions. This paper aims at designing and implementing a kinetic program of stimulation using simple means of basketball in order to improve the balance and laterality of children with intellectual disabilities. The results obtained revealed the efficientization of the fundamental motor skills (locomotion, handling and stability) of the research subjects.