Objectives: it is known that children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) have deficit of cognitive abilities. The goal of this study was to reveal effect of body-oriented therapy on visuospatial abilities in ADD children. We compared the efficacy of two methods of treatment (body-oriented therapy for children vs. conventional motor exercises) in a randomized controlled pilot study.

Methods: 16 children with ADD between 6 to 8 years of age were included and randomly assigned to treatment conditions according to a 2×2 cross-over design. The body-oriented therapy included the exercises from yoga and breathing techniques.

To assess the visuospatial in children we used 4 subtests from NEPSY (Arrows, Block Construction, Design Copying and Route Finding). Effects of treatment were analyzed by means of an ANOVA for repeated measurements.

Results: The ANOVA has revealed (p<.05) that for Block Construction subtest the body-oriented therapy was superior to the conventional motor training, with high range effect size (0.83). We did not find this result for Arrows, Design Copying and Route Finding subtests.

Conclusions: The findings from this pilot study suggest that body-oriented therapy has a specific positive effect on the reconstruction of 3-dimensional designs in children with ADD. However, it is necessary to do further research into the impact of body-oriented therapies on the cognitive abilities in ADD children.