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Angela Mandich

Publications and source records attributed to Angela Mandich.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

School-based occupational therapy for children with fine motor difficulties: evaluating functional outcomes and fidelity of services.

Consultative occupational therapy services are becoming widely used in the school environment. However, few studies have evaluated the utility of and the process by which these services are delivered. This study examined whether the written communication and fine motor skills of 23 children with fine motor difficulties improved after receiving school-based occupational therapy from a program whose mandate was to deliver services according to a consultation model of service delivery. In addition, the study assessed the process of service delivery, including treatment fidelity, or the extent to which consultation services were implemented as intended. Statistically significant and practically meaningful improvement was found in written communication on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Classroom Edition (VABS-C) and School Functional Assessment-Version 3.0 (SFA), and in fine motor skills on the SFA, but not on the VABS-C. An examination of the service delivery process revealed that therapists deviated from a purely consultative model, with 86% providing some direct therapy to children. Parents were mostly satisfied with services received, whereas teachers were indifferent or somewhat dissatisfied. Treatment fidelity is taken into consideration when discussing study findings. Recommendations to enhance school-based occupational therapy services delivered according to a primarily consultative model, and suggestions for future research, are provided.

Child↗
PubMed2005

Cognitive strategy generation in children with developmental coordination disorder.

BACKGROUND: Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a condition of impaired quality of movement and occupational performance. It has been hypothesized that the difficulties experienced by children with DCD may in part be due to an impaired ability to use cognitive strategies to solve occupational performance problems. Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) is a verbally-based approach to helping children remediate this difficulty. The current pilot study investigated the use of cognitive strategies in children with DCD to determine whether cognitive strategy use is improved by CO-OP. METHODS: Observations of video-recorded sessions of 18 school-aged children were scored for frequency and type of cognitive strategies used. RESULTS: Differences within and between groups revealed changes in the types and frequency of cognitive strategies. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The results of the present study support the use of a cognitively-based approach such as CO-OP in assisting children with DCD in developing cognitive strategies when solving occupational performance problems. However, further research using a larger sample is necessary to fully explore the impact of CO-OP on the strategy use of children with DCD.

Child↗
PubMed2003

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and their ability to disengage ongoing attentional focus: more on inhibitory function.

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), along with their Control counterparts, completed two endogenous, spatial precue tasks. When the precue arrow was informative (.80) with respect to target location, the spatial precue effect results demonstrated that children with DCD take significantly longer than Control individuals to volitionally disengage (inhibit) attention from an endogenously cued location (i.e., a disengagement inhibition deficit). When the precue was uninformative (.25), we found, contrary to a common assumption, that the precue arrow automatically moved attention in the direction of the arrow, and, in addition, that DCD children may also be less able to inhibit the precued-induced urge to move attention (i.e., an initiation inhibition deficit). This type of inhibitory difficulty was also indicated for manual response inclinations produced on catch trials. Overall, DCD children appeared to have an elevated difficulty suppressing the initiation of incorrect, stimulus-provoked movement urges, be they manual or attention in nature.

Attention↗
PubMed2002

On the ability of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) to inhibit response initiation: the simon effect.

The ability of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) to inhibit the initiation of an incorrect manual response urge was examined using a typical Simon task. While the size of the Simon effect was the same for both DCD (N = 20) and Control (N = 20) groups of children, showing no difference with respect to the time needed to complete the inhibition an unwanted response, children with DCD produced significantly more errors of the type which reflected a reduced ability to successfully effect the inhibition operation when it was required. This result is consistent with some earlier findings pointing to an inhibitory deficit for children with DCD (Wilson & Maruff, 1999).

Child↗
PubMed2002

Play time.

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Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Stigma and its management: a pilot study of parental perceptions of the experiences of children with developmental coordination disorder.

The findings of a small qualitative interview study with 8 parents of 6 children with developmental coordination disorder are reported. The parents discussed the social consequences of their children's motor difficulties. The new International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health was used as a framework for the analysis of the interview transcripts. The analysis revealed that the parents believed that their children's impairments restrict their participation in society. The interactions between impairment and participation are interpreted in the context of stigma and its management. The significance of occupational therapy interventions in the area of physical activity play to children's social life is discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗