Graduation Date
5-2018
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Occupational Therapy
Department or Program
Occupational Therapy
Department or Program Chair
Julia Wilbarger PhD, OTR/L
First Reader
Kitsum Li, OTD, OTR/L, CSRS
Second Reader
Maggie Smida, OTR/L
Abstract
The purpose of these pilot case studies were to investigate the effectiveness of the Functional Cognitive Activities for Adults with Brain Injury: A Sequential Approach (FCA) in generalizing functional cognitive skills across meaningful occupations for adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study was a pretest-posttest design consisted of two participants with TBI.
Both participants attended 14 out of the 16 intervention sessions, twice-a-week for eight-weeks. Pretest-posttest measurements, including the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM), Kohlman Evaluation of Living Skills, and Goal Attainment Scale (GAS), were used to measure changes in occupational performance. Additionally, a four-month follow-up phone interview using the COPM and GAS assessments explored the generalization of functional cognitive skills. Pretest-posttest results from the COPM demonstrated improvements, while the GAS results varied in occupational performance between participants. The four-month follow-up results demonstrated generalization in functional cognitive skills. The findings from this study provide preliminary evidence supporting the effectiveness of the FCA approach in improving functional cognitive skills and generalizability of skills to novel activities in individuals with TBI.