Lec 4.4 - Conditions for T-L

Teaching

• Fundamental skill for OTs

• Effectiveness depends on the ability to organize the environment and the instructional methods to meet the needs of the client

Learning

• Primary therapeutic mechanism underlying many OT interventions

  • Set of processes associated with practice or experience leading to relatively permanent changes in capability for responding to

• Creates a permanent change in the way the learner responds

Learning

• Happens outside of the session in the client’s context

• Shows understanding of what is taught

Performance

• What happens during the session

• Does not always translate to learning

Human Information Processing

• Learning is the transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory

• Durability of memory is a function of depth of processing

Deep Processing

• Ability to link new knowledge to older knowledge or experiences

Explicit Learning

• Declarative learning

• Consious encoding and recollection of specific events, tasks, rules, and facts

• Shallow version of learning, recalling information that has not been integrated

Implicit Learning

• Procedural learning

• Unconcious change in behavior resulting from repetition within a stable context

• Action becomes automatic because of habituation

Neurobiological

• Learner characteristics

• Physiological and anatomical integrity of the learner’s brain

• Biological makeup affects the learner’s teaching-learning process

Affective

• Learner characteristics

• Person’s emotional status may affect how they attend and store the information

Sociocultural

• Learner characteristics

• Client’s beliefs and surroundings

Experiential

• Learner characteristics

• Client’s experiences prior to the lesson

• From past experiences, know how the client performs their activities

Anticipated Length of Treatment

• Learner characteristics

• How long the patient stays at the hospital, the number of sessions covered by health insurance, or the clinic's rules.

• Help guide the therapist on what stage the client will be at the end of the treatment

Learning styles

• Learner characteristics

• Client’s own way of learning

• Modality may be:

  • Visual

  • Auditory

  • Kinesthetic

  • Tactile

  • Combination

Verbal

• Learner characteristics

• Instructional Modes

• Efficient method for teaching groups and individual clients

• Help the client with the next step of the sequence

Visual

• Learner characteristics

• Instructional Modes

• Effective for:

  • Cognitive and attention deficits

  • Difficulty in processing verbal language

  • Complex tasks to be described verbally

Meaningful Activity

• Something that has the greatest value and importance to the client and the family

• Client will be motivated to be an active participant in the therapy process

• Improvement of performance skills

• Ascribe meaning to an activity

Context of the Activity

• Setting in which the activity or event occurs

• May be a facilitator or barrier

• Cultural, physical, social, spiritual, temporal, virtual, etc.

• Use of real objects vs. the use of imagery-based tasks or rote exercise

• The end goal is for the client to adapt to any environment

Contextual interference

• Task and environmental variation force people to use multiple and varied information processing strategies, making retrieval easier

Near Transfer of Learning

• Equipment is the exact same or similar model to the one at home

• Mimics the person’s home environment in the clinic

• Learning is easily applied in different context

Far Transfer of Learning

• Environment in the clinic and home are very different

• Transfer of learning is far from actual context

• Uncertain if the client can transfer the skill from the clinic to their home context

Activity Analysis

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Ability to analyze the components and parts of an activity to use it purposefully, meaningfully, and therapeutically

Intrinsic Feedback

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Information from own senses

• Although they are readily available to the client, they may not know what to focus on or if what they are doing is correct

Extrinsic Feedback

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Usually verbal, coming from the therapist

• Allows client to alter or adapt their performance

• Can either be knowledge of results or performance

Blocked Practice

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Same skill or strategy is practiced over several repetitions, after which the next skill or strategy is practiced

Random Practice

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Changing variables to increase contextual interference

Occupational Gradation

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Systematically manipulating properties of the task, person, object, and environment to optimally challenge an individual’s performance

• Just-Right Challenge

Monitoring Skills

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Should help the client develop their own self-awareness and self-monitoring skills

Metacognition

• Attribute of Task being Taught

• Awareness of personal strengths and limitations 

• Ability to evaluate task difficulty

• Ability to plan ahead, choose appropriate strategies, and shift strategies in response to cues