Relationships Between Frequency of Attendance, Engagement and Independence in Everyday Activities Among Children and Youth With Intellectual and Other Developmental Disabilities: The Association With Comprehension Difficulties.
Anna Karin Axelsson, Magnus Ivarsson, Anna Ullenhag
PMID 41826264WHAT IT FOUND
Children with disabilities who also struggled to understand things attended everyday activities less often, were less engaged and were less independent than children with disabilities but no comprehension difficulties.
Gaps were widest in complex tasks like shopping, managing money and transport.
Key findings
01Children with disabilities who also had comprehension difficulties took part in everyday activities less often, were less engaged and were less independent than children with disabilities who did not; the difference was significant for all three on the total scores.
02The pattern held across all four settings (home, outside the home, school, and home and society), except for engagement at home and at school, where the difference between the groups was not significant.
03Within both groups the three ratings moved together: how often a child attended, how engaged they were and how independent they were correlated strongly to very strongly on the total scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Caregivers rated everything; the children did not rate their own engagement, even though the authors say engagement is subjective and should ideally be self-reported. No Swedish self-rating version of the questionnaire exists yet. Only 131 children took part, all recruited through habilitation centres in six Swedish regions chosen for convenience, so they may not represent children elsewhere. Comprehension difficulties were split into just two groups, present or absent, because there were too few children to analyse mild, moderate, severe and very severe separately. The children came from three different age groups and age was not strictly controlled; independence in particular is likely to differ with age. Everything was measured at a single point in time, so the study cannot show whether comprehension difficulties lead to less participation or the reverse.
Declared interests
Funded by the Swedish Research Council (grant 2018-05824_VR) and Futurum, the Academy for Healthcare, Region Jönköping County (grant FUTURUM-989510). The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The paper does not say whether the funders had any role in the design, analysis or writing.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as showing that comprehension difficulties cause children to take part less, or that the supports the authors suggest, such as visual schedules and simplified instructions, work. Caregivers rated the children at one point in time and no intervention was tested.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →