Measuring the effects of neurodevelopmental treatment on the daily living skills of 2 children with cerebral palsy.

This study examined the short-term effects of neurodevelopmental treatment (NDT) on the motor performance of daily living skills in 2 girls with cerebral palsy, aged 27 and 32 months. For 12 weeks, the subjects received treatment sessions consisting of NDT followed by play, or vice versa. After each treatment of play or NDT, the subjects were videotaped performing individually prescribed dressing activities. Trained raters, unaware of the type of treatment given, scored the videotapes on ordinally scaled dressing criteria. The results were not statistically significant for NDT or play for any criteria. The importance of this study is its development and exploration of refinements in single-subject research methods that show promise for use in the documentation of treatment outcomes. Such refinements include the use of functional activity as an evaluation tool and ordinal scales for the assessment of change.