The Cognitive Orientation to Daily Occupational Performance Approach and Transfer: A Scoping Review

Transferring learning from therapy to everyday life skills is a necessary step for successful therapy outcomes, yet rarely addressed and achieved. However, a cognitive approach to skill acquisition, and the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP), explicitly identifies transfer as an objective and incorporates elements into the intervention to support transfer. A scoping review was undertaken to explore the nature and extent of the research regarding CO-OP and transfer. An online search of 10 databases was conducted to identify and examine research studies reporting on CO-OP and transfer. The search yielded 25 documents that addressed CO-OP and transfer. The studies used a variety of approaches to evaluate transfer; all reported transfer on at least one and, in many cases, multiple transfer outcome variables. The CO-OP literature addresses transfer across a variety of populations and settings using a variety of approaches. Further work is required to establish a common approach to examining transfer in the CO-OP literature and the literature in general.