Sensorimotor Intervention for Children with Handwriting Difficulties Regarding Arabic Characters from Occupational therapists’ Perspectives in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

It is important to consider a sensorimotor approach in handwriting for improving basic performance skills such as visual-motor integration, visual perception, hand manipulation, and motor planning. This study aimed to highlight occupational therapists’ experiences and perspectives on the use of a sensorimotor intervention among second-grade students with handwriting difficulties regarding Arabic characters. This study employed semi-structured individual interviews, through purposive sampling, of occupational therapists (N = 5) in Indonesia. The first interview lasted 60 to 80 minutes, while the second lasted 15 to 20 minutes. A qualitative study with inductive content analysis was used to analyze the data based on two themes from the research aims: sensorimotor intervention for handwriting difficulties with Arabic characters and clinical consideration of developing a handwriting program. From the occupational therapists’ experiences, by strengthening performance components of handwriting and providing occupation-based graded activity, a sensorimotor intervention might improve the handwriting performance of students with difficulty regarding Arabic characters. Furthermore, when developing a handwriting program, the therapist must consider client and environmental factors.

Keywords:

• Sensorimotor intervention
• handwriting difficulty
• occupational therapists
• Arabic characters
• content analysis

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the assistance of all collaborators, participants, and colleagues in our research. Financial support for this study was provided by a grant from the Asian Human Development Project for Medical Professionals funding by the Tokyo Metropolitan University and Tokyo Metropolitan Government. We would also like to extend our appreciation to international students of the occupational therapist department, Tokyo Metropolitan University, for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.