Sensory Integration Dysfunction can sometimes feel like the latest buzzword.  But for many children and their parents, it is very real.  All day.  Every day.

In the simplest of explanations, it is the inability of a person’s body and brain to receive, organize, integrate, and interpret sensory information from the environment and themselves.

Today, I want to begin a two-part series by sharing about a tool developed to better help therapists identify and treat sensory dysfunction.  The Sensory Profile was developed by Winnie Dunn, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTA.  It also provides therapists a framework with which to explain to parents their child’s sensory characteristics.

Our Sensory System:

• Our neurological system that sends messages to the brain about our environment.
• Balances our senses in order to function in the environment.
• Able to respond to some stimuli and ignore the other stimuli for us to adapt to our environment.
• Includes touch, taste/smell, visual, auditory, vestibular (movement and body position in space), and proprioception (position of our muscles and joints in space).
• When one or more parts are not intact, the system can either run on high, low, or mixed.

THE SENSORY PROFILE

OVERVIEW:

• A standardized method of measuring and reporting sensory processing abilities.
• Questionnaire is completed by primary caregiver.
• Indicates a person’s response to basic sensory information (Sensory Processing), how one regulates neural messages through facilitation and inhibition of responses received from the environment (Modulation), and how one behaves in response to the sensory stimuli received (Behavioral and Emotional Responses).

SENSORY PROCESSING- Includes questions regarding:

• Visual Processing; measures responses to things seen such as bothered by bright light, misses details, doesn’t look at objects.
• Auditory Processing; measures responses to things heard such as distracted by noise, tunes out.
• Vestibular Processing; measures the child’s response to balance and movement such as becomes distressed when feet leave ground, car sickness, trouble with uneven surfaces.
• Touch Processing; measures child’s response to touch on skin such as irritated by socks or shoes, doesn’t seem to feel things as much.
• Oral Sensory Processing; measures touch and taste stimuli to mouth such as limits foods based on texture or temperature, stuffs mouth, poor articulation, aversion to touch around mouth.
• Multisensory Processing; measures a child’s response to activities that have combined sensory experiences such as overwhelmed in an active environment, melts down easily, hyperactive response to stimuli.