This section aims to expand the way everyone in occupational therapy thinks about actions and activities. Normally we think about the content, e.g. work, rest, and play, or self-care, exercises, housekeeping, cooking, crafts, etc. The content is associated with customary supplies and behaviors. The content, supplies and behaviors will be added to, but by the information they each contain, which pulls them all together. The same information that arouses the person's attention can be found in the content and supplies required to do actions and activities.
People with a cognitive disability pay attention to sensorimotor information, which is concrete in the sense that the cues must be internal needs and cues or perceivable external cues coming from the presence of material objects. Abstract information does not capture their attention. A person with prior knowledge of abstract information has limited access to it and cannot adjust it to fit the current application. Other people commonly think that their understanding of prior knowledge is rigid, outdated, or inappropriate. In contrast, when sensorimotor information captures their attention, the actions and activities that they can do make sense and are predictable.
Investing in learning how to think about the quality of sensorimotor information is worth the effort for several reasons:
- We can understand why only some actions or activities make sense to the person.
- We can produce more actions or activities that make sense to the person.
- We can demonstrate that the person can be happily occupied to long-term caregivers to help them identify with the good parts of the person and build empathy.
- We can describe patterns of action or activity performance in a sequence of 10 profiles that set general expectations.
- To customize the profiles for individuals, we can refine action and activity selections according to the 25 modes.
- To accommodate for physical disabilities, visual and auditory impairments, procedural memories and prior knowledge about actions and activities, we can make modifications that are identified by matching the 25 modes.
- We can set realistic expectations, achievable treatment goals, useful, appreciated discharge recommendations, and compassionate, lifelong program plans.
Information generalizes. All of the thousands of activities that people on this planet do contain information that can be evaluated and placed on the ACL scale. You can evaluate any activity that a person wants to do, no problem. The problem with a cognitive disability is the person's obsolete identity. They believe, and will always believe while they have a cognitive disability, that they can still do everything they could do before the onset of a cognitive disability. The truth is that they cannot. The person's ACL score clarifies what the person can do and what the person cannot do.
The sensorimotor information that does capture their attention requires the right supplies and instructions with different observation skills. Making videos is a great way to illustrate the difference. When taping behavior, one camera focused on their hands gives you all of the observations that you need. When sensorimotor information is added, two cameras are required. Close your eyes and see if you can figure out what the second camera is focused on. Sensorimotor information is processed in the person's mind. Mental processing can be observed in the movements of the pupils in the person's eyes and in their gaze toward material objects. That is of course, assuming that you have produced the right material objects. Without the right supplies, you cannot expect to capture attention.