Motor planning

1. Praxis:Strategiesto
LearnNewSkills
ArohiAtre
Occupational Therapist

2. • Praxis is a uniquely human skill that enables
us to interact effectively with the physical
world (Ayres, 1985)
• Praxis is the ability of the brain to conceive of,
organize and carry out a sequence of
unfamiliar actions (Ayres, 1985)
What is Praxis ?

3. Praxis is that neurological process by
which cognition directs motor action,
motor or action planning is that
intermediate process which bridges
ideation and motor execution to enable
adaptive interaction with the physical
world
What is Praxis ?...

4. What are the components of
Praxis?

5. Arousal :Level of Alertness

6. 2. Sequencing

7. • Ability to recognize the environment and the objects in
the environment and know what to do with them.
• Be able to recognize object/environment affordances to
generate a goal for a purposeful action and some idea
how to accomplish the goal.
• Involves:
• Knowledge of objects-knowing what objects in our world
do
• Knowledge of actions-what actions I can do with an
object
• Knowledge of action-object interactions
• Knowledge of serial interactions
3. Ideation

8. • Affordances-The
object/environment-specific
qualities that invite interactions
• Recognition of affordances is
related to knowledge of actions and
knowledge of objects and facilitates
our ability to ‘know” what to do
with objects.
Knowledge of object and action -
Affordances

9. Difference between ideation and
creativity
• Creativity happens in the head versus ideation which is
what you can do with your body(can compose
symphony on the head or a beautiful picture in the head,
can narrate stories)
• Very good with talking but don’t really DO
anything
• Very good at pretend play and recollecting story, but
don’t do anything with their bodies.

10. • Can have ideational issues existing
separate of motor planning issues
• Eg. Children very good at sports but
couldn't play or engage themselves. But
did not matter as the family a very
scheduled family. Did not know what to do
with legos as when free they watched
television.

11. • Increase in the incidence of kids with
ideational issues
• No exploratory play nowadays
• Toys these days do not facilitate object
affordances, can be used only one or two
ways.

12. • Organizing actions
• Coordinating two parts of your
body
Motor planning

13. • Execution is actually doing the activity
• Feedback is the information that we get
from our proprioceptive sense and
external sources that allows us to refine
motor skills. It creates a memory of how
things are done.
• Feedback and feedforward work together
to help us perform tasks efficiently
Execution and Feedback

14. • If I cannot organize my body , can I
organize my actions or problem solve?
• So organization of behavior and problem
solving often comes as an end product of
praxis
Organization of Behavior and
Problem solving

15. • Clumsy child
• Problems with sports, dressing, eating,
handwriting
• Disorganised
• Longer than average to learn tasks
• Frustrated
• Does not know what to do
How do I know if a child has Praxis
problems?

16. • Having praxis problems is like having
someone come into your house every
night and rearrange the house. You don’t
know where the bathroom is , you don’t
know where to walk. Nothing is automatic!

17. • Repeat it 5 times to form a motor engram
• Amotor engram is nothing more than a set of instructions
stored in the brain. These instructions tell the body how to
perform a specific movement. When a young child first tries
to throw a ball, their body does not know how to perform the
movement skill. As the child tries again and again to throw
the ball the body learns/remembers how to perform the
movement. This set of instructions, ormotor engram, is
stored in the brain. The next time the child needs to throw a
ball, the brain can quickly access the motor engram and tell
the body how to quickly and efficiently perform the
movement without having to re-learn it.
What can I do to promote praxis?

18. • Always clean up the loop- have a clear beginning, middle
and end.
• Make sure there is a closure to tasks
• That promotes the organizational skills
What can I do to promote praxis?..

19. • Reinforce that tasks have a beginning, a
middle and an end
• Reinforce verbally or in writing or through
pictures
• Number it! What’s number one?
Ideas for sequencing

20. • Questioning and promoting self discovery-stop
telling them what to do
• Bridging- making connections between what they
are doing now and what they know and giving them
a mental picture
• Model your thinking
• Promote knowledge of object and action
affordances-specially for younger children
Ideas for Ideation

21. • Get back to basics- basic motor patterns- crawling, rolling,
creeping, playing hopscotch- that’s how they will learn about
their bodies
• Get the head down- get the head out of the upright- because it
tells them about space, lots of vestibular input
• Whats the plan? Questioning them, rather than
telling! Let them verbalise…
Ideas for motor planning