To explore impacts of sports games designed based on the information-motivation-behavioral skills model (IMB) on prosocial behavior in children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) attending regular classes, so as to provide a theoretical basis for promoting the development of prosocial behavior in school-age IDD children.

From February to March 2023, 40 children with intellectual disabilities aged 8-9 who were enrolled in ordinary schools in Beijing were recruited by using WeChat parents to send messages. They were randomly divided into an experimental group (19 before intervention, 17 after intervention) and a control group (19 before intervention, 19 after intervention) by lottery method. During the study period, children in both groups received the same frequency and quality of regular physical activities. The experimental group, in addition, underwent a 13-week sports game intervention based on the IMB model, 4 times a week, each session lasting 50 minutes. The sports game intervention scheme based on IMB model was divided into two modules, including basic training and development training: low-difficulty sports game intervention based on emotion recognition, and medium-low-difficulty and medium-difficulty sports game intervention based on social training such as "prosocial". The Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM) and the Prosocial Behavior Scale for Adolescents (PBSA) were used to assess empathy ability and prosocial behavior levels of children in both groups before and after the intervention.

After intervention, the cognitive empathy dimension, emotional empathy dimension and total score of GEM in the experimental group (39.15±2.85, 38.54±1.94, 77.69±3.95) were higher than control group (32.18±4.18, 32.28±4.28, 64.56±6.48) and before intervention (33.92±4.94, 31.30±4.61, 65.23±8.47), and the differences were statistically significant (F=12.06, 6.99, 14.90; 8.95, 7.36, 13.22, P < 0.05). After intervention, compliance with public welfare factors, trait factors and total score (31.33±1.97, 16.67±1.03, 71.83±2.93) were higher than control group (22.65±1.58, 12.59±0.71, 59.47±2.18) and before intervention (22.00±1.27, 12.17±0.75, 58.00±1.67), and the differences were statistically significant (F=17.00, 36.54, 12.71; 29.87, 13.09, 13.12, P < 0.05).

Sports game intervention based on IMB model can effectively promote the development of prosocial behavior of children with IDD attending regular classes.