What is sensory integration therapy ?
It is a type of treatment that helps individuals with autism manage and respond to sensory information in the environment more successfully. For most of us, the integration of our senses helps us to understand what we are experiencing. Autism often involves hypersensitivity or under-sensitivity to sensory information. In other words, individuals with autism may find certain sounds or light to be excruciatingly painful, whereas they may seem indifferent to experiences that would be painful for the average person.
A. Sensory integration therapy is used for children who have difficulty with processing sensory information. The sensory information that the body must organize and perceive correctly includes vision, auditory, touch, olfaction (smell), taste, vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (positional). Often times, children who have autism, vestibular processing disorders, dyspraxia (difficulty with fluid and coordinated body movements), sensory discrimination and perception problems, sensory defensiveness, gravitational insecurity, sensory registration problems, and others benefit from sensory integration therapy. Sensory Integration Therapy assists the child in participating in their daily life activities by introducing them to sensory activities in a systematic way to help them cope and deal with the information that they receive. The basis for this therapy has four main principles: The “Just Right” challenge, adaptive response, active engagement, and child directed. The Just Right Chall
