Efficacy of an Intervention to Teach Zippering: A Two-Group Control Study

Engaging and pulling up a zipper is a functional skill needed by young children.

To compare the efficacy of a standard zippering teaching vest presented with general verbal prompts to a modified zippering teaching vest presented with a related story and vocabulary among typically developing preschoolers.

An experimental, two-group, pre-post design.

A local preschool.

Fifty preschoolers ages 3 yr, 6 mo to 4 yr, 11 mo were recruited.

Eligible children received three zippering practice sessions from occupational therapy and speech-language pathology graduate students supervised by faculty; either a standard (control group) or modified (comparison group) zippering teaching vest was used.

Individual sessions were video recorded. We coded data using a score of 2, 1, or 0, indicating degree of success through seven zippering steps. Using IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 26) for analysis, we conducted independent t tests to compare measures between the two groups.

Each cohort consisted of 14 preschoolers (N = 28); 252 separate zippering trials were analyzed. Pretrial zippering ability demonstrated no initial differences. Results indicate that both groups advanced their skills with added practice; however, the comparison group performed statistically significantly better than the control group, beginning with the second set of interventions.

Beginning with a second exposure to a novel instructional method, preschoolers increased their success by completing more of the seven identified steps of zippering than those receiving traditional input. This study demonstrates the ability of occupational therapy-speech-language pathology partnerships to create innovative treatments that facilitate occupationally based skill acquisition.

This article adds evidence supporting the use of a modified practice zippering vest with added visual and language cues to teach zippering skills to occupational therapy clients.