Importance: Time management is crucial for managing daily activities but is difficult for many people with neurodevelopmental or mental disorders. Few sustainable interventions have addressed time management in daily life. Objective: To describe the experiences and meaning of attending the Swedish version of the Let’s Get Organized (LGO–S) group intervention. Design: Qualitative design with interviews 1 to 4 mo after the completed intervention. Setting: Outpatient psychiatric and adult habilitation clinics. Participants: Twelve adults with neurodevelopmental or mental disorders. Intervention: LGO–S, a manual-based group intervention that focuses on time-management skills. Outcomes and Measures: Semistructured interviews analyzed with qualitative content analysis. All authors took an active part in the analysis process; consensus was reached. Results: The overarching theme, “a roller-coaster process toward control over time in daily life,” describes the participants’ process during and after intervention. Four main categories describe the meaning of understanding why time management is difficult and how to use tools for improvement, a process of change that was facilitated by the learning environment. Participants described the process as a struggle to take control over time, but they noted that the positive changes in daily life made it worthwhile. Conclusions and Relevance: Participation had a positive impact on daily life. The opportunity for skills training with support over an extended period, a changed view on failure, and the group format appear to be important success factors. What This Article Adds: The LGO–S, with its structured training of time-management skills, contributes to occupational therapy practice with an intervention that clients experience as bringing meaningful and positive changes to daily life functioning.

Date Presented 04/13/21 OTs working with children with sensory processing and praxis challenges need fast, valid, and reliable assessments to identify motor planning difficulties. The Motor Planning Maze Assessment (MPMA) is a 5-minute screening for motor planning skills that can help meet this clinical need. Age and gender trend performance on the MPMA was examined in children with sensory processing and integration challenges and typical peers 5–12 years of age, as were group differences. Primary Author and Speaker: Teresa A. May-Benson Additional Authors and Speakers: Maxwell Toepfer, Alicia Noffke, Abigail Bradfield, Jessica Schmidt, and Kristen A. Pickett Contributing Authors: Karla Ausderau, Susan Andreae

Date Presented 04/23/21 The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of a literacy-focused OT intervention program on reading engagement and reading achievement in elementary-school-age children. Children who develop functional literacy skills will have the ability to further their education and vocational goals. This concerns the field of OT because it is our mission to facilitate the skills needed for all people to engage in their occupational roles. Primary Author and Speaker: Turquessa Francis

Social participation in schools is critical to student academic and psychosocial outcomes. Neurodivergent students, however, often experience environmental barriers to social participation, such as lack of awareness and negative attitudes among peers and school staff, including teachers. Although authentic social participation is composed of dynamic interactions between a person and the external environments, occupational therapy’s role in addressing student social participation primarily focuses on internal social characteristics. Barriers within school environments often remain unaddressed, with no clear role for occupational therapy practitioners. We advocate an expansion of occupational therapy’s role to address school environments, especially the social, physical, and policy aspects, to promote social participation and inclusion. We also discuss the need for change and present a framework guiding intervention in school environments.

There is a continued need to communicate global perspectives in occupational therapy education, but the literature addressing how to incorporate firsthand global experiences into campus learning environments is scant. This article describes how course-based synchronous interactions between U.S. undergraduate occupational science students and Swedish undergraduate occupational therapy students occur via online technology. In a 2014 pilot study, we thematically analyzed students’ open-ended survey responses to discern what students learned through the interactive sessions. We also performed a content analysis of four audio-recorded interactive sessions to understand the content and nature of students’ learning. Our findings suggest that course-based online synchronous interactions provide a positive way for students to learn about other cultures and global differences in occupational therapy practice. The findings also highlight needs for improvement relative to the structure and aims of the interactive sessions. We relate these findings to the global availability of technology and occupational therapists’ cultural competence.

OBJECTIVE. We describe the development and examination of the construct validity of the Quality of Life in School (QoLS) questionnaire for elementary-age students. METHOD. The QoLS evolved through four phases in which we devised its items and examined its construct validity. Examination of the construct validity of the final version of the QoLS included 353 students in third through sixth grades. RESULTS. Factor analysis identified four categories within the questionnaire’s items: student–teacher relations, school and classroom physical environment, positive feelings toward school, and negative feelings toward school. Internal consistency indicated a high correlation among the items in each of the factors. In addition, third-grade students reported significantly higher perception of school quality of life (QOL) than their older peers. CONCLUSION. The QoLS may assist clinicians and educators in evaluating students’ school QOL from a multidimensional perspective, including the school’s physical environment, which has received little attention.

OBJECTIVE. This study investigated the effects of cerebral palsy (CP) and gender on youth participation in activities outside of formal school. METHOD. Twenty-two participants with CP and 30 typically developing peers, ages 12–16 years, completed the Children's Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE; King et al., 2004). RESULTS. Typically developing youths engaged in a broader range of activities and did so more frequently than did youths with CP. Similar levels of enjoyment in activity were found in both groups. In some scales of the CAPE, youths with CP participated in proportionally more activities alone and at home. Gender differences and Group ×Gender interaction were found in some scales with respect to participation in and enjoyment of activities. CONCLUSIONS. Physical limitations associated with CP may affect the frequency of a child's participation in activity outside of school. However, youths with CP may express levels of enjoyment similar to those of typically developing peers while participating in activity.

Children’s learning to do everyday activities seems so obvious that the mechanisms bringing about the development of occupations remain essentially unstudied. Therefore, occupational therapy uses developmental models from other disciplines as foundation for practice. We specialists in childhood occupations need a theory-based and empirically tested body of knowledge about the processes leading to change to inform practice and guide interventions during efficacy studies. One body of knowledge about developmental mechanisms views change as originating from within the child and informs practice centered on changing the child. Given the inseparable nature of children and their social environments and daily activities, we introduce the philosophy of contextualism and outline a potential body of knowledge about a change process that is occupation centered. An intervention arising from a contextual perspective illustrates how this way of thinking leads to occupation-centered practice that uses multiple strategies and supports a child’s occupation with social participation with peers.

The experience of being human is embedded in sensory events of everyday life. This lecture reviews sensory processing literature, including neuroscience and social science perspectives. Introduced is Dunn’s Model of Sensory Processing, and the evidence supporting this model is summarized. Specifically, using Sensory Profile questionnaires (i.e., items describing responses to sensory events in daily life; persons mark the frequency of each behavior), persons birth to 90 years of age demonstrate four sensory processing patterns: sensory seeking, sensory avoiding, sensory sensitivity, and low registration. These patterns are based on a person’s neurological thresholds and self-regulation strategies. Psychophysiology studies verify these sensory processing patterns; persons with strong preferences in each pattern also have unique patterns of habituation and responsivity in skin conductance. Studies also indicate that persons with disabilities respond differently than peers on these questionnaires, suggesting underlying poor sensory processing in certain disorders, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, developmental delays, and schizophrenia. The author proposes relationships between sensory processing and temperament and personality traits. The four categories of temperament share some consistency with the four sensory processing patterns described in Dunn’s model. As with temperament, each person has some level of responsiveness within each sensory processing preference (i.e., a certain amount of seeking, avoiding, etc., not one or the other). The author suggests that one’s sensory processing preferences simultaneously reflect his or her nervous system needs and form the basis for the manifestation of temperament and personality. The final section of this lecture outlines parameters for developing best practice that supports interventions based on this knowledge.