Is There a Place for Assessment of Procedural Perceptual-Motor Learning in Pediatric Rehabilitation? A Survey of French Psychomotor and Occupational Therapists

Abstract

The principles of motor learning have been applied in neurological rehabilitation for years. The underlying assumption is that these principles that have been identified in research on healthy individuals would also apply to those with neurological disorders, making them highly relevant for rehabilitation. However, there is currently no tool dedicated to evaluating motor learning abilities, that refers to procedural perceptual-motor learning (PPML) abilities, before rehabilitation. To address this gap, we created a new tool assessing PPML (EVALuation de l’APprentissage Procedural [EVAL_APP]), based on two experimental tasks known to assess motor sequence learning and visuomotor adaptation. The study aimed to determine whether this tool is suitable for clinical practice and meets care needs by conducting a cross-sectional online survey of psychomotor and occupational therapists in France. The results show that professionals are interested in measuring PPML, and over half of them indicated that they would use the tool. Participants who felt trained about PPML responded positively to the relevance of PPML assessment and to the future use of the EVAL_APP tool. While some parameters of the EVAL_APP tool are well adjusted, others may need improvement to be adapted for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, including Developmental Coordination Disorder. The results are encouraging for pursuing the conception of the new tool by considering the opinion of professionals specialized in pediatric rehabilitation.