STUDY ON LEARNING THE BOCCE-SPECIFIC TECHNIQUE

Abstract

The truth that the physical exercises practiced either independently or systematically has beneficial effects on the whole body has long been demonstrated and supported by empirical or scientific studies. Subsequently, this assertion was also proved in the case of people with intellectual disabilities. For this category of population, the level of learning various motor skills is different from one individual to another. There are periods when the learning is very fast, the pace being close to that of valid individuals. However, these periods alternate with periods of stagnation or even regression. In the learning phase, successful attempts are rare and technically incorrect. Gradually, people with Down syndrome manage to learn the technique specific to a sport discipline and commonly use it according to their needs and the specific circumstances. In this context, the present study aimed to identify how athletes with Down syndrome have learned and enhanced the technique specific to the game of bocce, especially the technique of releasing the ball. For this, we tested 16 athletes with Down syndrome (10 children and 6 adults; 8 girls and 8 boys) who were members of the target group included in the Erasmus+ Sport 590526 project. The methods used to conduct the study were: documentation, experiment, statistics and graphical representation. The test applied to the research subjects, namely the divisioning bocce test, resulted in the recording of higher performances for 10 athletes, while the performances of the other athletes were not statistically significant.