The effect of occupational therapy interventions on perceptual motor function and drawing skills of mentally retarded children

The process of hand writing need to coordinate a cognitive, perceptual and motor skills complexity. Given that occupational therapists in schools increasingly refers mental retardation children for hand writings problems and hand writing is an important activity of daily living for children. Thus in this study were considered that the effect of occupational therapy intervention on perceptual motor function and drawing skills of children with mental retardation.

Using non-probability simple for sampling method, based on example of monitoring and sample size, 10 children for treatment group and 10 children for control group were considered. The treatment group during 10 weeks, 3 sessions per week for 60 minutes, occupational therapy intervention was trained. Both groups were trained by usual occupational therapy. After 10 weeks, all subjects were re-evaluated. Long-Form Bruininks - Oseretsky Test and Slowsen’s test used to assess perceptual motor function and drawing skills, respectively. Then the statistical analysis was performed on the data by use of SPSS software.

Analyze of variance univariate test show that the test scores Slowsen and coordination between the two groups was not significant(P ≥ 0/05), but the total test scores, gross motor and fine motor development Bruininks – Oseretsky Test sub test between the two groups was significant(P ≤ 0/05).

Results of present study show that occupational therapy intervention cause to improve perceptual motor function, but has not effect on drawing skills in mental retarded children.