Heart Rate Responses of Profoundly Retarded, Multiply Handicapped Children during Closed-Skill Fine Motor and Open-Skill Gross Motor Activities

Abstract

This study compared the heart rate responses of two profoundly retarded, multiply handicapped children during the performance of closed-skill fine motor activities and open-skill gross motor activities. The fine motor skills were typical classroom activities, and the gross motor skills were a part of each child’s special physical education programming. Heart rates were recorded for 20-sec intervals from the onset of the performance of each skill until the task objective was obtained. Based upon the results of this study, we concluded that the closed-skill fine motor classroom activities induce physiological stress at levels never before suspected. It is suggested that the dramatic heart rate responses may result from a hyposensitive condition of the spindle afferents, the gamma efferents, and the kinesthetic joint receptors, or from a breakdown in the retrieval of the stored motor program resulting in inappropriate spatial and temporal summation. As a result of the heart rate responses, it is suggested that classroom learning programs may need to be redesigned to accommodate for fatigue in this type of child.

“He is not crying for real”: severe, multiple disabilities and embodied constraint in two special-needs education units

“…Most of the existing research about children with disabilities and the use of assistive equipment is embedded in a dichotomy of disabled-not disabled and an individual deviation approach (Lancioni et al, 2004;Logan et al, 2001;Mulholland & McNeill, 1989). Findings in disability studies based on social and relational models of disability, technology, or education (Östlund, 2015;Söderström, 2016;Söderström & Ytterhus, 2010) identify students using assistive technical devices as competent, attentive, and responsive, and are thus partly in line with our study.…”

“…The predominant approach in existing research regarding SMD has viewed disability as an abnormality of the individual child, and thereby focused on the treatment and remediation of individuals' deviations and problems (Lancioni et al, 2004;Mulholland & McNeill, 1989;Sigafoos et al, 1993). A typical example is a case study by Lancioni et al (2010).…”

“I Guess that the Greatest Freedom … ”: A Phenomenology of Spaces and Severe Multiple Disabilities

“…multiple disabilities have generally applied perspectives other than the phenomenological. Proceeding from a medical perspective, Mulholland and McNeill (1989), as also Foley, Harvey, Chun and Kim (2008), apply what are upheld as objective medical standards for measuring bodily reactions. Applying a behaviourist perspective, Lancioni, Bellini, Oliva, Singh, O'Reilly, and Sigafoos (2010) view behaviour in terms of cause and effect; and, adopting a social perspective, Östlund (2015) focuses on educational organization as shaping students' participation.…”