Child

The clinical reasoning framework aims to guide practitioners in selecting strategies in approaching sensory challenges in order to optimize participation of children with autism spectrum disorder. Several clinical reasoning considerations are based on this framework, and these include research evidence, client- and family-centeredness, practice contexts, occupation-centeredness, and risks. This framework emphasizes on the use of mutual information-sharing and coaching to empower families or teachers and develop their own solutions to supporting children’s participation.

The Model of Occupational Wholeness focuses on the four dimensions of occupation: doing, being, becoming, and belonging, as well as how these dimensions lead to an individual’s wholeness, health, and wellbeing. This model is illustrated by triangles. A black proportionate triangle illustrates the hypothetical ideal relationship between doing (in the middle), being, become, and becoming (each is a corner of the triangle).

The Framework of Occupational Justice (FOJ) offers an occupational perspective of justice or injustice on everyday occupations. This framework emphasizes on the inclusion of every individual in an occupationally just word (i.e., the environment, such as community and government, in which the individuals can do what they decide to be the most meaningful and useful to themselves, family, communities and nations). It illustrates how the inter-relationships of structural factors and contextual factors support or restrict occupational outcomes and occupational rights.

The theory of occupational reconstructions emphasizes the mind-body engagement to deal with an inherently transformational injustice or problematic situation. This theory views occupations as pragmatic with meaning of inquiry. In other words, occupations are experiments for searching the truth. Occupations are creative, and engagement in occupations are intrinsically motivated (the hallmark of occupational therapy). This theory consists of seven principles, 1) Occupational reconstructions respond to a problematic situation (i.e.

The Person-Environment-Occupation (PEO) model is a model that emphasizes occupational performance shaped by the interaction between person, environment, and occupation. The person domain includes role, self-concept, cultural background, personality, health, cognition, physical performance, and sensory capabilities. The environmental domain includes physical, cultural, institutional, social, and socio-economic environment. The occupation refers to the groups of tasks that a person engages in and meets his/her self-maintenance, expression and fulfillment.

The Model of Human Occupations (MOHO) is a model that describes how humans generate and modify their occupations in interaction with environment, which presents a dynamic open cycle system of human actions. The system considers information from environment and the feedback of performed action as input, and then goes through the internal part of system. The internal part consists of three subsystems: Volition, Habituation, and Performance. Volition subsystem initiates one’s action, consisting of three components.

The Biomechanical frame of reference for positioning children for function is applied to individuals who are unable to maintain posture from appropriate automatic muscle activity caused by neuromuscular or musculoskeletal dysfunction. The goals of this frame of reference are (1) to enhance development of postural reactions, which can be done by reducing the demands of gravity and aligning the body, and (2) to improve functional performance by providing external support for proximal stability to improve distal function.

This frame of reference adapts a top-down approach to identify visual perceptual factors that limit an individual’s daily participation, and adaptive and compensation approaches are used to facilitate engagement in meaningful occupation. It uses theories from cognition, developmental psychology, education, and Warren’s developmental hierarchy of visual perceptual skills. Visual Perceptual skill development is viewed to be developed from a hierarchy, starting from oculomotor control, visual fields, visual acuity.

The social participation frame of reference emphasizes the power of emotion to motivate and engage children’s social participation. Early relationship with parents provides the foundation for children’s social development, because children give meaning to their own emotions and learn strategies in regulating their emotional states based on how others and environment responses to their emotions. At the same time, the children regulate the caregivers’ behaviors and then they learn how to regulate their own and others’ emotions during future social interactions.

The Neuro-Developmental Treatment (NDT) frame of reference is used to analyze and treat posture and movement impairments based on kinesiology and biomechanics. To identify difficulties and plan for intervention, the following concepts are to be considered in NDT, including planes of movement, alignment, range of motion, base of support, muscle strength, postural control, weight shifts, and mobility. NDT assumes that posture and movement impairments are changeable. Thus, it utilizes movement analysis to identify missing or atypical elements.