The Effect of Choice on Compliance Using Telerehabilitation for Direct Attention Training: A Comparison of “Push” Versus “Pull” Scheduling

Abstract

Home practice, a type of asynchronous telerehabilitation, is an integral component of most rehabilitation regimens. Exercise drills conducive to home practice have been shown to be beneficial in remediating acquired impairments in attention, speech, language, and voice. A variety of interacting psychological, cognitive, and socioenvironmental factors contribute to short- and long-term exercise adherence. There has been little research evaluating the personal characteristics most likely to motivate clients to engage in their rehabilitation and follow through with prescribed activities. In this project, we were interested in using telerehabilitation to learn more about factors that might increase clients' adherence to home exercise; we used direct attention training as our experimental domain. The study used a single-subject, alternating treatment experimental design with 2 participants to compare compliance on home attention exercises under two conditions. The Attention Process Training-3 (APT-3, 2010) direct attention training program, delivered via the Televised Assistance Program (TAP) system, allowed us to compare compliance under (a) conditions when the client had no control over the start-up of the program (push) versus (b) conditions when the client had to initiate turning on the program to do the home program (pull). Results showed that home exercise adherence was higher for both participants under the nonautonomous push condition. This ran counter to our hypothesis, based on the therapy literature, that suggested patients are more likely to follow through with home assignments when practice is under their control. We discuss our findings with respect to the interaction between self-efficacy, therapy beliefs, and autonomy for patients with acquired brain injury.