Introduction: Independence in life is one of the important perspectives of training in disabled people. The goal of educational programs in independent living is to give mentally disabled people the opportunity to live independently in the community through skills training. Considering the importance of the subject, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of a selected occupational therapy training program with emphasis on fine motor skills on visual-motor control in educable children with intellectual disabilities.
Methodology: The research method was semi-experimental with a single-experiment structure. For this purpose, two 10-year-old boys with intellectual disabilities were selected from among the first grade students of Yazdbaspar educational complex in Yazd city in the academic year of 2023-2024 based on a diagnostic interview based on DSM-V by purposive sampling method. In order to measure the variables of the current research, three subscales of the Broninkes Ozertsky test (1978) were used, including cutting a circle with the dominant hand, drawing a line in an interrupted, straight and curved path with the dominant hand, and imitating geometric shapes with the dominant hand. Selected occupational therapy training program including fine movements for one month (8 training sessions and each session for 30 minutes) was implemented on both subjects. After the implementation of the educational program, the sub-tests were conducted again. The results were analyzed using the dependent t-test in SPSS 26 software at the level of 0.05.
Results: The findings showed that the scores of all three subscales of cutting a circle, drawing a line in an interrupted, straight and curved path and imitating geometric shapes with the dominant hand improved in both subjects after the implementation of the selected educational program compared to the pre-test conditions. P≤0.05).
Conclusion: According to the results, it is suggested that selected occupational therapy exercises with emphasis on fine motor skills should be used to improve the visual-motor control in educable children with intellectual disabilities