ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Movement Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1587481
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Motor Imagery Across the Lifespan – Gaps Between Practical Applications and Theoretical FrameworksView all 8 articles
Improving Children's Visual Health by Integrating Motor Imagery Training into Physical Education Classes
Provisionally accepted
- 1Suzhou City University, Suzhou, China
- 2School of Physical Education, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
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Introduction: Myopia threatens healthy physical and mental development in children. Research suggests that motor imagery training could serve as a non-invasive and cost-effective nonpharmacological intervention to address myopia and promote health. Therefore, this study examined the effect of incorporating motor imagery training into physical education classes on children's visual health.Methods: A 16-week intervention was conducted. The participants were 154 children divided into four groups: three experimental and one control. Group 1 performed motor imagery exercises with a visual target moving near and far, Group 2 performed physical activity imagery exercises combined with visual tasks, and Group 3 performed physical activity combined with visual tasks.Results: After the intervention, kinetic visual acuity (p < 0.05), accommodation facility (p < 0.01), and uncorrected distance visual acuity (p < 0.01) improved significantly in all experimental groups.Moreover, Groups 1 and 2 showed significant improvements in cognitive specific motor imagery abilities (p < 0.05). There were significant differences in kinetic visual acuity (F=2.994, p = 0.033, η 2 =0.056), accommodation facility (F=8.533, p < 0.001, η 2 =0.146), right-eye uncorrected distance visual acuity (F=5.550, p = 0.001, η 2 =0.100) and left-eye uncorrected distance visual acuity (F=2.667, p=0.050, η 2 =0.051) among the four groups.: Incorporating motor imagery training into physical education classes can improve children's visual health by enhancing cognitive and visual skills. The findings of this study may help develop interventions to prevent myopia through activation of ciliary muscles.
Keywords: Motor Imagery, Visual health, Uncorrected distance visual acuity, Kinetic visual acuity, ciliary muscle, Myopia, Children
Received: 04 Mar 2025; Accepted: 23 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Ren, Ma, Zhang and Yin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Meng Zhang, School of Physical Education, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
Rongbin Yin, School of Physical Education, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
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