Applicant E.A. Letova¹
Dr.Hab., Professor L.A. Semenov^1
1Surgut State Pedagogical University, Surgut

Objective of the study was the experimental evaluation of the corrective effects of fitness aerobics with the use of a linear method on the attention span in children with mental retardation.
Methods and structure of the study. The educational experiment was conducted for two years under natural conditions of physical education classes with the involvement of 48 mentally retarded schoolchildren of the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, who were split into the Control and Experimental Groups in each parallel. The Control Group subjects were trained three times a week according to one of the most widely used physical education programs in Russia, developed under the guidance of A.P. Matveyev, without any additions. The Experimental Group subjects were trained twice a week using specially chosen fitness aerobics exercises (basic and complex elements, routines). The main specific correction principle defining the teaching methods was the principle of fragmentation, which implies a systematic division of the teaching material into small parts or elements.
Results and conclusions. The findings indicate an unquestionable corrective effect on the attention span in children with mental retardation through fitness aerobics practices. It should be noted that the article presents only one fragment of the research related to the study of the possibilities and effectiveness of using fitness aerobics exercises to correct the children’s cognitive sphere (including memory and thinking). Other areas of research also yielded positive results, suggesting that it would be useful to update the new scientific direction in adaptive physical culture aimed to correct primary abnormalities in children with mental retardation (possibly with other intellectual disabilities as well) and not necessarily through fitness aerobics practices.

Keywords: mentally retarded children, adaptive physical education, fitness aerobics, correction, attention span, linear method.

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