A COMPARISON OF THE VISUAL PERCEPTUAL SKILLS IN TYPICAL AND CEREBRAL PALSY CHILDREN

Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the difference at occupational performance skills related to visual perception among typical developing children and cerebral palsy children by using measuring test of MVPT-R. Design And Sampling Technique: Quantitative cross-sectional study, convenience sampling method. Study Setting And Participants: A total of 400 Cerebral palsy children (all types) and typical children each from different mainstream schools, rehab centers, pediatric occupational therapy departments, and special education centers located in Karachi. Interventions / Data Collection: Test of visual perception that is Motor Free visual perceptual test- Revised MVPT-R. Result: Result shows difference in perceptual ages (PA) between typical and cerebral palsy children. Perceptual age (PA) was greater than the chronological age (CA) in the typical group. Conversely, in the CP group the perceptual age (PA) was lesser than the chronological age (CA). Conclusion:  Visual perception skills play a key role in a child’s achievement at school and at home. Children require intact visual perception for the successful performance of their daily living as well as academic tasks like good eye-hand coordination, handwriting, reading, shape perception, play skills, and copying patterns, etc. This study is helpful to identify those children who have visual perception issues and sorting this problem will form the baseline for better evaluating and planning of useful visual perception activities for typical and cerebral palsy children.

Impact of Financial and Macroeconomic Measures on Economic Development

SAARC countries are, in general, under developing economies having less remarkable growth rate. This study focuses on to find out the impact of financial and fiscal variables on economic development of 5 SAARC countries, namely; Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Remaining 3 countries of the region are omitted due to the absence of stock markets in these countries, stock markets being an important part of the study. Data on Financial and macroeconomic measures have been collected for the period of 20 years from 1994 to 2013. Financial measures include Money and quasi money (M2), Trend in Foreign Exchange reserves (TFER), Private Sector Credit by financial institutions (PSC) and Value of Stock Traded (VST) and macroeconomic measures include Trade balance (TB), Consumer price Inflation rate (IR), Exchange rate (ER), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Gross fixed capital formation (GFC) as independent variables and Growth in Per Capita Income (GPCI) as dependent variable. Pooled OLS regression is used for panel analysis and as data had heteroskadasticity issue so VCE (robust) is used for minimizing the impact of standard errors. The results of the study support the positive impact of financial and macroeconomic measures on economic development of SAARC countries.