PURPOSE: This study examined the effect of a 16-week ball skill intervention on the ball skills, executive functioning (in terms of problem solving and cognitive flexibility), and in how far improved EF leads to improved reading and mathematics performance of children with learning disorders. METHODS: Ninety-one children with learning disorders (aged 7 to 11 years old) were recruited from six classes in a Dutch special-needs primary school. The six classes were assigned randomly either to the intervention or the control group. The control group received the school's regular physical education lessons. In the intervention group, ball skills were practiced in relative static, simple settings as well as in more dynamic and cognitive demanding settings. Both groups received two 40 minutes lessons per week. Children's scores on the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (ball skills), Tower of London (problem solving), Trailmaking Test (cognitive flexibility), Dutch Analysis of Individual Word Forms (reading), and the Dutch World in Numbers test (mathematics) at pre-test, post-test, and retention-test were used to examine intervention effects. RESULTS: The results showed that the intervention group significantly improved their ball skills, while the control group did not. No intervention effects were found on the cognitive parameters. However, within the intervention group a positive relationship (r = 0.41, p = 0.007) was found between the change in ball skill performance and the change in problem solving: the larger children's improvement in ball skills, the larger their improvement in problem solving. CONCLUSION: The present ball skill intervention is an effective instrument to improve the ball skills of children with learning disorders. Further research is needed to examine the impact of the ball skill intervention on the cognitive parameters in this population.

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