ABSTRACT

Occupational therapists often employ multidimensional tasks. These tasks, referred with necessary exercise, yet direct the focus of attention toward another objective or outcome. The assumption is that the additional purpose will result in improved task per- formance, provided it is sufficiently distracting or meaningful to the person. The pres- ent study examined the effects of an added purpose task on performance compared with a single-purpose task, namely rote exercise, as measured by the number of repetitions, task duration, and exercise heart rate. Stoppage during the activity was also recorded. Thirty-nine elderly subjects performed both added purpose activity and rote exercise in randomly assigned order. Results indicated that the added-purpose, occupationally em- bedded exercise condition elicited significantly more exercise repetitions(p=.001), and longer task duration than did the rote exercise condition (p=.000). This study provides additional support for the traditional occupational therapy concept of embedding exer- cise within occupation.