One out of every twenty children in school is affected, in significant ways, in classrooms across our nation by sensory processing disorders (SPD) (Nodding, 2017). In classrooms where students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are present, that number rises even higher because almost 100% of students with ASD experience SPD (Murray, Baker, Murray-Slutsky & Paris, 2009). Teachers must understand the unique needs of students with SPD in order to create environments where students feel comfortable to learn in every day. Optimal learning for students with SPD requires an environment that supports and assists them to effectively and systematically organize and understand the information they are taught. Unfortunately, most classrooms present sensory challenges that can be frustrating or even overwhelming for students diagnosed with SPD. The daily negative experience at school often adds more stress for these students due to their social interactions and how they regulate emotions (Lytle and Todd, 2009).<div><br></div><div>There are two purposes of the study: 1) general education teachers’ use of interventions to support students with ASD and SPD was examined to determine what worked most effectively in their classrooms, and (2) general education teachers’ perception of barriers for implementing research-based strategies was examined in order to identify potential problems in creating supportive environments for students with ASD and SPD in the general education classroom. Eighteen teachers participated in the study at a private school with 335 students in a suburban area. The survey included 8 questions about the effectiveness of sensory interventions for students with ASD and/or SPD at school.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The result of this study showed that the majority of teachers want to be supportive to students diagnosed with SPD. Seventeen teachers (94%) expressed a concern for students who may feel overwhelmed by providing some variation of a calming area within their classroom Concerning the use of flexible seating, 6 teachers (33%) responded that they do not offer flexible seating, and 3 teachers (17%) indicated it was the least effective intervention they offered students. These responses could indicate that there is misunderstanding concerning the use of flexible seating and how to effectively implement it within the general education classroom. Another notable result is that 7 general education teachers (39%) indicated they lacked the space to provide a calming area for students in their classrooms.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The result of the current study supports the findings in previous research that there is a need for teachers to be more knowledgeable about how to create classrooms that offer support, effective strategies for students diagnosed with SPD. A handbook was created for general education and special education teachers based on the result of the present survey study and findings in previous studies. This handbook focuses on clear explanations of the unique stresses that students with SPD face, with the hope that if teachers have a clearer understanding about the needs of these students, they will be inspired to consistently offer research-proven strategies to support and encourage their students who face unique challenges in the school environment every day. <br></div>

The COVID-19 pandemic increased uncertainty and anxiety for most and was especially disruptive to autistic people and their families. Autistic children were particularly vulnerable due to their intolerance for increased uncertainty and disruption to their school and therapy support. This study aimed to investigate the effect that increased uncertainty had on autistic children, specifically their sensory behaviors and stress levels and on the stress levels of their primary caregivers. Parents and guardians of 47 autistic children completed an online survey consisting of questions investigating background and demographic information, their experiences during the first six months of the pandemic, information about the types of support that they were provided, and measures of intolerance of uncertainty (IUS-12) and sensory processing (SSP). Additionally, 10 primary caregivers participated in semi-structured interviews to explore in-depth accounts of their experiences and those of their children during the pandemic. Eighty nine percent of caregivers reported their children had significant sensory difficulties prior to the pandemic. We found that this majority group showed significant increases in sensory processing and intolerance of uncertainty from pre to during the first six months of the pandemic. Changes from pre to during the first six months of the pandemic were significantly correlated suggesting that as uncertainty increased, sensory processing ability decreased. Disruption to routines was significantly correlated with sensory processing and explained a significant portion of the variance in child, household, and parent stress. The themes found in interview responses including the relationship between sensory processing and uncertainty, living in "survival mode,"and unmasking reflect the quantitative findings, showing that the uncertainty introduced by disrupted routines increased sensory processing difficulty and typically autistic behaviors. These findings have implications for helping us to understand the relationship between uncertainty, sensory processing, and stress leading to better interventions and supports for this population. Additionally, primary caregivers noted the need for increased education and training for parents during therapy sessions and for a stronger community of primary caregivers to support the unique needs of these individuals and families.

Sensory processing disorder (SPD) is a neurological condition that alters the way an individual perceives sensory information. Although the condition has been studied for more than 40 years, SPD remains a difficult condition to diagnose, treat, and live with because it affects individuals uniquely, and the symptoms can change from childhood to adulthood. For children diagnosed with SPD, the misinterpretation of sensory cues can cause difficulties in family, social, and academic settings. While there is some research on the assessment and treatment of SPD, what is missing is a deeper understanding of the family, social and academic challenges these children and their families face. The purpose of this case study was to examine the experiences of children diagnosed with SPD, as told by 4 parents and their occupational therapist in semi-structured interviews. Four themes emerged from the analysis: family dynamics (challenges within the family structure), support impact (seeking and having support), emotion and balance (overcoming the struggles related to the emotional demand), and an SPD child (the search for balance for the child and the family). The results may serve as a catalyst to encourage positive social change for the children with SPD and their families by expanding the available knowledge on the challenges of SPD.

Abstract   Introduction: Play is a primary occupation of children as well as a powerful medium in paediatric occupational therapy. Dyspraxia refers to a problem in planning new movements because of a poor body scheme that derives from deficits in processing vestibular, proprioceptive or tactile sensations. This study mapped the information that has been written about play in children with sensory processing disorder (SPD) described as dyspraxia.  Methods: A methodology of scoping review was used. The data was collected through electronic databases (academic and non-academic) and reference lists. Academic databases were CINAHL, AMED, Medline, ERIC, PsychInfo and PubMed.  Results/findings: Four themes emerged from the data; play skills, play behaviour, environment and therapy effect. Dyspraxia does not necessarily affect to play skills but more to the quality of play and to the participation in play situations. Some children had learned to adapt their skills or used compensatory clowning. Modification of the environment helped to cope with the situation and finding “the just-right-challenge” helped participation. In case studies, sensory integration therapy increased the ability to play.  Conclusion: Dyspraxia does not always lead to disruption of play skills. Play should be assessed separately and considered as important goal in therapy as sensory processing difficulties.

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Embodied cognition is the study of how actions and interactions with objects and individuals affect cognitive processing. Neuroaesthetics deals with the neural, biological and evolutionary aspects of aesthetic experience which occur through the senses and consist of the emotional value placed onto objects, for example the appreciation of art work, dance, or music. These are individual and differ depending on level of expertise and experience within the art. The main aim of the thesis was to investigate the link between embodiment and aesthetics through examining people’s level of creativity, colour perception and sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) in relation to levels of empathy and theory of mind (ToM). Research into this is sparse as the role of the body in relation to aesthetic experiences is a relatively new concept. Preference for portraits versus landscapes was also investigated to look at any role of social stimuli in aesthetic preference. Results demonstrate that participants with (i) higher levels of creativity (for some types of creativity) and (ii) more acute colour perception had higher levels of empathy/ToM. Individuals who had higher SPS demonstrated higher empathy/ToM. It was also found that colour perception and empathy levels decrease with age, and aesthetic preference for portraits increase with age. These results have implications for education/schools, the prison service, for specific clinical conditions such as autism, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, particularly given the role of dopamine in these disorders and in colour perception. Future research should investigate these findings using brain imaging and physiological measures.

Sensory processing sensitivity is an innate temperament trait characterized by deeper cognitive processing of stimuli, increased empathy and emotionality, ease of overstimulation, and heightened awareness of subtileties in the environment. This systematic review aims to review the literature that has investigated the neural correlates of sensory processing sensitivity. A systematic search was conducted in Web of Science and Scopus resulting in seven studies included in systematic review. Five studies are functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, one magnetic resonance imaging study and one near-infrared spectroscopy study. Results show that sensory processing sensitivity is associated with enhanced activation of neural regions involved in higher order visual processing, attention, awareness, memory, emotion processing, action planning and information integration (e.g., insula, precuneus, IFG, PFC, claustrum, amygdala, and hippocampus). An increased understanding of this temperament trait is essential as it is an important factor for mental health and well-being.

yes / Sensory adaptation experiments have revealed the existence of ‘rate after-effects’ - adapting to a relatively fast rate makes an intermediate test rate feel slow, and adapting to a slow rate makes the same moderate test rate feel fast. The present work aims to deconstruct the concept of rate and clarify how exactly the brain processes a regular sequence of sensory signals. We ask whether rate forms a distinct perceptual metric, or whether it is simply the perceptual aggregate of the intervals between its component signals. Subjects were exposed to auditory or visual temporal rates (a ‘slow’ rate of 1.5 Hz and a ‘fast’ rate of 6 Hz), before being tested with single unfilled intervals of varying durations. Results show adapting to a given rate strongly influences the perceived duration of a single empty interval. This effect is robust across both interval reproduction and duration discrimination judgments. These findings challenge our understanding of rate perception. Specifically, they suggest that contrary to some previous assertions, the perception of sequence rate is strongly influenced by the perception of the sequence’s component duration intervals. / This work was supported by a Wellcome Trust [WT097387] grant to NWR

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) represents a group of developmental disabilities associated with impairments in social, communicative, and imaginative abilities. Speech impairments associated with ASD can be explained by differences in cognitive processing styles relative to neurotypicals. Previous studies found that individual differences in cognitive processing influence one’s production and perception of prosody. For example, Stewart et al. (2018) found that higher levels of autistic character traits indicated by one’s Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) score (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) correlated significantly with one’s ability to discriminate pitch and time, but no significant correlation between auditory discrimination thresholds for intensity. Additionally, Turnbull (2015; 2019) observed shorter overall word and vowel durations during a task which required participants with varying AQ scores to speak for the benefit of a listener with a hearing impairment. The present study examined whether prosodic cue-trading in production and perception differs when comparing populations with varying levels of autistic traits, as indicated by their AQ score differences. Furthermore, the study investigated whether these differences exist on a continuum, or rather are categorical, with respect to participants’ level of autistic character traits. To achieve this, we analyzed individual variability patterns in 18 participants’ speech production and perception. Results from the perception task showed that participants displayed a significant enhanced perception of pitch and intensity, but not duration, when completing a task where participants listened to sentences manipulating the prosodic parameters f0, intensity, duration. Results from the production task where participants read sentences designed to elicit background, broad, and narrow focus found no significant effect of AQ across any of the acoustic parameters measured, although the results for f0 are near the 5% significance level for the f0 condition, suggesting that participants with higher AQ scores may produce lower f0 ranges, and thus, less prosodic variability compared to low AQ participants. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) represents a group of developmental disabilities associated with impairments in communicative abilities, among others. Theories suggest that individuals with higher levels of autistic traits notice small details in the physical properties of sounds, but have trouble distinguishing the more abstract, intended meaning of the same sound patterns. Previous studies found that individual differences in the degree of autistic traits influence one’s production and perception of prosody (i.e., the relative highness or lowness of a tone),; individuals with higher levels of autistic are better able to detect fine-grained differences in pitch and time, but not loudness. The present study examined the extent to which speakers with varying levels of autistic traits use prosody during speech production and perception. This study observed that (1) individuals with higher levels of autistic traits displayed an enhanced perception of pitch and loudness, but not time, and (2) that these same participants may exhibit less variability in their production of pitch.

No description available.