Anatomy of cognitive strategies: a therapist's primer for enabling occupational performance

Promoting effective strategy use is an integral part of enabling occupational performance; however, there are variations in how strategies are defined, discussed, used, and applied in occupational therapy practice.

Focusing on cognitive strategies, in this paper, we define and describe strategies and their types and divide the concept of strategies into two dimensions: strategy attributes and strategy use. A comprehensive framework for each dimension (attribute and use) is proposed as a clinical reasoning guide as well as a foundation for future research. The frameworks are designed to reduce ambiguity, deepen understanding, and serve as clinical reasoning guides assisting therapists in specifying, describing, and observing cognitive strategies during occupational performance.

We argue that there is a need for therapists to use consistent terminology and to be able to systematically select cognitive strategies and evaluate their use.

The proposed strategy frameworks provide clinical guides for systematic analysis and selection of cognitive strategies as well as for observing components of strategy use during clients' occupational performance. We suggest the need for greater specification and description of strategies during intervention and highlight directions for future research.