A review of therapeutic intervention research on gross and fine motor progress in young children with cerebral palsy.

Recently, perhaps due to increased societal demands for accountability, early intervention programming for handicapped infants and young children has been questioned. Therapeutic intervention provided through occupational and/or physical therapy has been increasingly implemented in habilitation settings for children diagnosed as having cerebral palsy, although research justifying this increase is inconclusive. This review presents a comprehensive evaluation of 18 studies that evaluated early occupational and/or physical therapy intervention for children with cerebral palsy. An analysis of these studies revealed that as research paradigms become more rigorous, support for therapeutic intervention effectiveness decreases. This finding was explained in light of the currently inadequate levels of technology relating to instrumentation and the manipulation of the many variables that have been suggested to affect therapeutic intervention effectiveness.