An analysis of a board game as a treatment activity

Occupational therapists often use tabletop board games in treatment to help adult clients with physical disabilities improve the perceptual, cognitive, sensory, and fine motor skill components of occupational behavior. Detailed activity analyses of these types of activities, including performance norms, are not available in the occupational therapy literature. Such analyses would help therapists consider the multiple skill demands of tabletop games and allow more systematic grading of these treatment activities. This paper presents a model for analyzing therapeutic activities in relation to relevant motor learning and cognitive-perceptual literature. Included in this analysis are a description of the activity, examination of its component skills and of the qualitative features of activity performance, suggestions for grading and for treatment goals, and some preliminary performance standards derived from a pilot study of 18 adults without physical disabilities. The issue of transfer of skills between games and functional activities is also discussed.