3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/45
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Development of a questionnaire to determine change in the occupational performance of pre-school children with autistic spectrum disorders receiving occupational therapy - sensory integration(2010-09-20) Wallace, Kerry AnneAs there are no occupation based outcome measures evaluating the effect of occupational therapy in the pre-school child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) an Occupational Performance Questionnaire (OPQ) was developed to address this. The OPQ was tested for content validity and reliability before a 12 month intervention study to establish construct validity and response to change in children with ASD receiving Occupational Therapy using a Sensory Integration frame of reference (OT-SI) was done. The results of 19 subjects on the OPQ were compared with the results on two other standardised measures -the Short Sensory Profile (SSP), and Parenting Stress Index (PSI-SF) at six monthly intervals. Convergent validity between family impact on the OPQ and the PSI-SF was moderate but for occupation performance on the OPQ and the SSP it changed from negligible to moderate over 12 months. The OPQ is responsive to change as correlations between improvements in the three outcome measures were moderate. The OPQ was found to still need attention in terms of item reliability and validity.Item The use of Ububele persona dolls in an emotional literacy programme with pre-school children(2008-11-25T12:17:44Z) Buchanan, Lee-AnneUbubele is a resource and training centre located in the greater Alexandra Township of Johannesburg. One of Ububele’s projects, the Ububele Persona Doll project, is a programme that is aimed at developing emotional literacy in pre-school children using a life-size handmade doll in a group setting. This research has sought to explore the use of the Ububele Persona Dolls. The sample consisted of eighteen Grade R children at the Ububele Therapeutic Nursery School and their teacher. They were video recorded during six regular Ububele Persona Doll sessions. The use of the dolls in developing emotional literacy in pre-school children, as well as their potential for use in group therapy was assessed in three different stages. Firstly, the presence of emotional material in the form of emotional adjectives was assessed. The teacher’s response patterns and level of empathy, as well as the effectiveness of the responses in terms of the goals of emotional literacy development were analysed. Lastly, the transcripts were examined for the presence of material, with regard to thematic content that could be used in group therapy. The presence of emotional adjectives suggested that there was useful emotional material present, although the material was mainly brought up by the teacher and the range of the material was limited. The teacher’s responses were most frequently informative, didactive or directive responses and questioning responses. However, she did make use of paraphrases and restatements, reflections and verbal encouragers to a lesser degree. With regards to the empathic levels of the responses, most of the responses involved exact replications of what was said by the child and no empathic responses requiring an understanding of human behaviour were given. The goals of emotional literacy training were all being achieved within the sessions. A number of themes, including physical discipline, abuse and neglect, broken or non-nuclear families, and death and dying, emerged. These themes could be concentrated on by a group facilitator.