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Research: Children Are Significantly Less Fit than Decades Ago

Photo by Chucka_NC on Flicker Creative Commons License The American Heart Association presented research on 50 studies on running fitness between 1964 and 2010 that involved more than 25 million kids, ages 9 to 17, in 28 countries. Most of the studies measured cardiovascular endurance by how far kids could run in a set time […]

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5 Tips on Tackling Big Goals

At times, all children need some help to achieve big goals.  Whether it be a lofty IEP goal that you inherited, a large project the student needs to complete or a complex motor skill often times it is easier to break it up into smaller, more manageable chunks.  Teachers call it scaffolding and therapists sometimes […]

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Hippotherapy and Children with Autism

The American Journal of Occupational Therapy published a pilot study on 6 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who participated in 45 minute hippotherapy sessions for 12 weeks.  To determine pre and post intervention scores the following were used: the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales–II, the Child Activity Card Sort, force plates and a video motion […]

Active Prospective Control Necessary for Sensorimotor Learning

Recent research studied 36 adults with no history of motor or neurological impairments were assigned to one of three groups – active (participant actively guides movement), passive (therapist or robot guides movement) or control group.  This study used haptic tracking for the passive movement.  The results indicated the following: no effective learning with passive movement […]

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Sleep Patterns in Children with Autism

The Archives of Disease in Childhood published research on longitudinal sleep patterns in 73 children with autism.  Parental reports of sleep duration were collected 8 times from 6 months to 11 years old.  The results indicated the following: from 30 months to 11 years old children with autism sleep 17-43 minutes less than their peers […]