Occupational Therapy and Dance

Therapeutic Dance Intervention:

• Complete aerobic exercise videos, video games (wii, connect)
• Add arm/ankle weights to develop strength and increase ROM
• Participate in group therapy focusing on exercise and strength

Cognitive Model

Focus:

• Most cognitive approaches are concerned with difficulties relating to structuring, organizing, and using information for task performance.

Theory:

• Cognition involves a long developmental process influenced by social mediation.
• Cognition is part of a mind-body system in which cognitive functions cannot be understood fully without reference to the motor system.
• Cognition is dynamic and results from multiple factors both inside and outside of the person interacting together.
• Remedial: aims to retrain or restore specific cognitive skills
• Compensatory: helps persons to capitalize on their existing potentials; applies to clients who have less capacity for learning

Therapeutic Intervention:

• Remedial treatment of executive functions involves providing persons with opportunities to choose, select, plan, and self-correct.
• Compensatory approach involves providing external support or strategies to allow adequate performance.
• Cognitive Retraining is used to improve capacity to process information and awareness of abilities.
• Neurofunctional Training is for clients with severe cognitive impairments.
• Dynamic Cognitive Intervention combines remedial and compensatory interventions that directly and simultaneously enhance participation while seeking to improve and expand learning ability and self-perception.
• Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance  is a cognitive intervention for improving motor performance in children with developmental coordination disorder.

Therapeutic Dance Intervention:

•  Give client a simple 8-count routine to memorize and execute.  If the client can do this, add modifications to make the task more difficult like increase speed.
• Allow the client to choose music/type of dance they would like to complete and include them in the creation process
• If a client cannot complete a motion, modify the action so the client can successfully complete. (ex: if a client cannot put their hands over their head, have the client use one arm to hold the other arm up to complete the task)
• Repetition of tasks will increase the client's cognitive abilities to remember the task  

The Functional Group Model

Focus:

• The functional group seeks to enhance occupational behavior and thus adaptation by mobilizing dynamic group forces that have the potential to positively shape people’s understanding of themselves or their abilities.

Theory:

• True groups include:
• Interaction among their members
• A common goal
• A relationship between size and function
• Members’ desire or consent to participate in a group
• A democratic capacity for self-determination
• Groups are characterized by structure, cohesion, and stages of development
• Group structure refers to the combination of parts that form the group
• The basic concepts of the functional group model are adaptation (adjustment of the environment) and occupation (action or behavior or a member in the group).
• Groups can also provide a sense of identity and self-worth to their members. 

Therapeutic Intervention:

• Functional groups involve four overall stages in which the group is designed, formed, developed, and concluded.
• Forming the group involves getting everyone acquainted, sharing how the group will function, an developing accepted norms of behavior in the group.

Therapeutic Dance Intervention:

• Complete dance activities while in a group to allow for other members to assist with a clients actions
• The other members can help a client memorize actions, increase motion, and gain confidence
• While in the group, members will develop a self-acceptance within themselves
• The groups common goal is to dance and to gain a deeper understanding of themselves
• Smaller groups allow for more intimate experiences

Model of Human Occupation

Focus:

• Motivation for occupation
• Occupational life pattern
• Subjective dimension of performance
• Influence of environment on occupation

Theory:

• The model conceptualizes humans as composed of three elements:
• Volition refers to the process by which persons are motivated toward and choose what they do
• Habituation refers to a process whereby doing is organized into patterns and routines
• Performance capacity refers both to the underlying objective mental and physical abilities and the lived experience that shapes performance
• Volition
• Icludes a deep human drive for action combined with thoughts and feelings about doing things
• Personal causation
• Personal values
• Interests
• Habituation 
• Organizes ones doing into the recurrent patterns that make up much of daily routines
• Habituated patterns of action are governed by habits and roles that give regularity, character, and order to what people do and how they do it
• Performance Capacity
• Focuses on subjective experience and its role in how people perform
• Asserts that instead of being simply and artifact or consequence of doing, experience is central to how people perform
• Environment
• Provides:
• Opportunities
• Resources
• Demands
• Constraints
• Systems Theory
• Frames how volition, habituation, performance capacity, and environment are interrelated and organized over time, emphasizing that:
• Occupation is dynamic and context dependent
• People shape who they are by what they do
• Conceptualizes the doing of occupations at three levels:
• 1. Participation
• 2. Performance
• 3. Skill
• Occupation adaptation, identity, and competence
• Persons realize their occupational identify and competence over time as they develop and respond to life changes

Therapeutic Intervention:

• Concept of change and understanding nature and process of change is central to this model’s explanation of therapeutic intervention
• Provides a detailed account of process of change that occurs in therapy
• Stresses that only clients can accomplish their own change
• Concept of occupational engagement underscores two points:
• For doing to be therapeutic, it must involve an actual occupational form, not a contrive activity
• For client to achieve change through doing, what is done must have relevance and meaning for clients

Therapeutic Dance Intervention:

• The clients are motivated toward and choose to particpate in dance with or without other participants
• Have a client participate in a dance with music that they enjoy
• Dance is organized into patterns and routines
• Dance requires both mental and pysical abilities to shape the performance
• A client can utilize dance to express their inner most feelings while particpating an actual occupational form

Sensory Integration Model