The Effectiveness of Neurodevelopmental Treatment for Motor Impaired Children

―Meta-Analysis for a Retrospective Study―

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Neurodevelopmental Treatment (NDT) for children with motor disabilities. Meta-analysis was used to estimate the effectiveness through reviewing previous studies. Meta-analysis is a relatively new statistical method that allows us to find out overall effectiveness of a therapeutic intervention through reviewing previous research articles that relates to the issue. The effectiveness of the therapeutic intervention is represented by the effect size that is defined as the difference between the means of the experimental and the control group divided by the control group standard deviation. I estimated the effect size of the long term treatment through experimental studies which had published between 1985 and 1994 (Study 1). Furthermore, the short term effectiveness of NDT was estimated through studies that had published between 1970 and 1994, dealt with immediate effectiveness of NDT after one treatment session (Study 2). The effect size of the Study I was -0, 21, and of the Study 2 was 0.69. The results suggested that NDT intervention was not predominant against other control conditions while the changes of performances during short term NDT intervention was obvious.