What Is Sensory
Processing
Disorder?
Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) is a complex disorder of the brain that affects children and adults.
There are at least six subtypes of SPD, and many children combine more than one; there are countless possible combinations. The term "sensory processing" refers to:
1. Our ability to take in information through our seven senses: the primary five (touch, smell, taste, vision, hearing) plus the "hidden two:” proprioception (sensation of body joints and muscles) and vestibular (sense of where the body is in space relative to the earth's gravity),
2. Our ability to organize and interpret the sensory information we perceive, and
3. Our ability to make a meaningful response to the sensory information coming into our brains.
For many people, this process is automatic. Children with SPD, though, don't experience this process the same way. Sensory Processing Disorder affects how their brains interpret the sensory information they perceive and may also affect how a child reacts to sensory information. Often the symptoms are emotional, attentional, and/or motoric.
Children with SPD misinterpret everyday sensory information such as touch, sound, and movement. They may feel bombarded by information, seek out intense sensory experiences, or be unaware of others' sensations. When a child experiences a decreased ability to process sensations, they have difficulty producing appropriate actions, which interferes with learning and behaviors. They may have sensory-motor symptoms.
A child with SPD may:
▪ be overreactive to sensations or experiences and affect intensely. The light touch of a shirt may feel like pins and needles.
▪ be oversensitive to familiar sounds. These sounds may be painful or overwhelming.
▪ be uncoordinated, bump into things frequently, or be unaware of where their limbs are in space.
▪ be challenging to engage in conversation or play.
▪ be unable to discriminate different types and intensities of movement. Children with SPD may also:
▪ experience difficulty with activities, play, and interactions that require motor planning, sequencing, visual-spatial awareness, and/or auditory processing and communication.
▪ love to line up their toys or complete puzzles but will often be unable to engage in motor-based interactive problem-solving.
▪ feel helpless or frustrated when a task requires using their body in space (physical environment), visual tracking and finding parts, and fixing things.
Learning how to manage one's emotions constructively can be a different challenge for children with sensory processing and autism spectrum disorders. But do not doubt they have the range of emotions that all children have. How a child expresses these emotions may vary.