CONCEPT-BASED AUTISM INFORMATION: Early Sensorimotor Development Models

What does sensorimotor integrative disorder mean, is that the same as Autism?
Many, but not all, people with Autism may exhibit obvious to very subtle kinds of symptoms of sensory processing, modulation, and integration problems. Yet, these phenomena of human perception are hard to measure with traditional scientific methods. So we must begin with conceptual models of how our senses work. Furthermore, not all people with early sensory disintegrative symptoms have Autism and not all people with Autism have sensory processing problems. Therefore, these are innate biological conditions for which we have few recognized standardized medical or neurological tests to indentify, in the way we can other naturally occuring sensory perception problems like vision loss, hearing loss, or tactile sense and motor losses. Once, again we must rely mainly on a person's reports, or in the case of a noncommunicative person, careful adn objective behavioral observation to determine how the usual early stages of our sensorimotor growth, change, and integrative stability may represent typical or atypical patterns of development. Therefore, this means that adult providers must master the less exact science and very exacting art of sensory interventions.

What is the nature of how senses work and combine in typical ways?
Both clinical neurological and sensorimotor therapy research reveals a functional sequence of how sensory input is recieved by the peripheral and central nervous system, which consists of how the sensory organs of our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin and other motor receptors throughout our bodies transmit input to the spine. All this percieved input is then instantaneously sent to various parts of the brain, and then organized and used by the other main locales of our central nervous system--specific to the brain structure of human beings in this typical way:

Sensory Stimuli > Perception > Processing > Integration > Modulation > *Interpretation*>

When this system functions well typical children recognize and learn how to percieve the environment in ways that are shared with other typical people. This system eventually becomes an unconscious support of our natural competencies in and relatedness to the world around us. This happens without any specific forms of teaching for children without Autism. For people with Autism and related disorders we may need to explictly work to gain it.

What are the senses which are involved in this combined system?
After any external or internal sensory event happens and is virtually instantaneously percieved, processed, and integrated by our nervous system in relation to the brain. Only then may the the sensory information be interpreted in terms of its meaning, which ties our sensorimotor functions into the communication and social cognitive activities of our brains. This is where the intersection of the three aspects of Autism are so critical. Therefore, the innate biological capacity and integral functioning of human beings seven (possibly eight) sensory systems of the brain are initially developed and primarily organized from before conception to about 22 months of age:

Sight (how the eyes and brain work together to intake and organize visual information
Hearing (how the ears and brain work together to intake and organize auditory information
Smell
Taste
Tactile or Light Touch (EXTERNAL sense of temperature, pressure and pain or pleasure of contact)
Propriception or Deep Touch (INTERNAL to the muscles-joints-bones that cue body position in relation to gravity)
Vestibular (Orientation of head position and sensory organs response-ability to the environment)
and Sharone Lee and phenomenological developmental research would propose that there is an Eight sense of the
Temporality of the human perception of Time. While it is not a true sensory linked to the objective enviroment, it is an inner experience of the passage and measure of time that emerges at this same stages of development of sensorimotor development and that has equally important impacts on how we integrate functional information about our selves and our daily experience. Many people with Autism seem to have/report problems with their perception processing, integration and interpretations of the passages and meanings of different units/experiences of time.)

These sensory capacities may or may not continue to follow a typical pattern of able gains and losses across our life span. For example, it is TYPICAL for infants to have certain levels of higher and lower sensitivity to stimuli in our first year, and for people to lose some of our vision and hearing and movement capacity as we age--most of us do. Therefore, our sensorimotor systems represent a lifelong neurological foundation for the basic information processing systems of the brain, which support much of our later social and cognitive development. The development of infants’ sensorimotor systems accounts for the rapid emergence of functional behavior in toddlers and the elder populations losses account for how we may begin to slow down in or even loss some of our sensorimotor processing capacities. However without this early foundation our developmental patterns are compromised and vulnerable to real problems.

What is the nature of how senses may dysfunction or function in very atypical ways?
Any form of able-loss or significant atypicality in how our sensorimotor systems support higher cognitive and social information processing systems of the brain interprets information are critically important. Losses in the perception and even more so, the processing, integration, and interpretation of sensory information will automatically create serious functional problems. Singular sensory perception losses like blindness or deafness, while very serious, are actually more easily coped with over our life span than are multiple complex processing and integration problems of Autism. The sensorimotor problems of Autism often exist as hidden under-arousal and visible over-arousal in relation to environment. These complex sensorimotor problems can present themselves in an unpredictable cyclic manner.

Various sensory therapies have been developed to help people with Autism improve their visual and auditory processing and integration capacities, such as Vision Therapies for stribizmus, which is common in children with Autism and Auditory Integration Therapy. However, when therapuetic professionals use the term "Sensory Integration Therapy" they are most often referring to occupational and physical therapies that treat the sensory dysfunctions of the tactile proprioceptive, and vestibular elements of the peripheral nervous system.These parts of the sensory system are just as important to our survival, adaptive functioning and social environmental experience as vision and hearing. Dysfunctions and disruptions of these systems create significant and serious symptoms. Sensory integration therapies often offer oral, olfactory, tactile, fine motor and gross motor activities that can be built into daily life, work and play.

Sensory perception, processing and integration are the precursors for the development of short and long term memory, communication and social skills we see emerge at 9-60 months. This is the st/ages when we may begin to identify features of Autism, because children with this condition have problems in early neurological development and so, often the typical and fully able functioning of our sensorimotor systems. Severe problems may be observable from birth. When moderate it is usually clear between 2-3 years of age, but when mild they may not be apparent until 4-5 years of age, when the increased functional demands of school highlight atypical/losses and gains. Autism unusually impacts a person’s developmental pattern in significant and more often permanently negative ways in terms of the longterm recovery of typical sensorimotor processing, but prosthetics and skills training can help.

People with Autism may literally live in a different world than we do. We may not be biologically and mentally READY>>ABLE>>WILLING to get to our world on their own even if we all feel emotionally ready, able and willing. We typical adults must be our children's first guides from the sensory planet of Autism to get to our typical world. While most people with Autism may seem overly sensitive (hypersensitive), research shows that their systems are usually more neurologically (hyposensitive) to environmental stimuli. It is the combinations of over and under sensitivity and misprocessing of that input that creates our inner experiences and outer observations of sensory dysfunction. We see links between the symptoms of this atypical sensory experience in the atypical behaviors of people with Autism (such as resistance or compulsion to touching certain things or being touched in certain ways, toe walking, finger wiggling, hand flapping, spinning, rocking, and even hard head banging.) Althrough behaviors may be tied to the anxiety of sensory, communication or social features of Autism as separate or culumative experiences of the stressors of extreme underarousal or over arousal over time. These distortions in sensory input and the resulting problems with modulating them can create symptoms of attention and focusing problems that impact students in educational settings. It is very important to understand that not all people with sensory dysfunctions have Autism, however many but not all people with Autism have sensory dysfunctions that are difficult to identify.

Therefore, people with Autism usually have a different experiential, meaning making, and so cultural view of what is TYPICALLY a shared world. This means when we are together we must BOTH cope with the impacts of Autism. This means that in physical relationship to each other we can both experience having mutual sensorimotor deficits. This means we may both have trouble making sense of each other’s perceptions and tolerating what we are hearing, seeing and feeling in our shared environments. But only people with Autism must deal with the isolation and frustration brought on by a self-defeating existence without an awareness or knowledge that people can help each other live, work and cope and that we can learn to help ourselves too. That is our biological advantage here.

So it is critical to understand that for all its mutual impacts, only persons WITH Autism experience the physical effects of Autism. But how our experience of the sensorimotor problems shows in our behavior is the reality that is shared with typical providers. This reality is then part of our relationships with each other. So we both need access to parenting/teaching methods in which people with Autism can quickly recognize and value our/their actions/efforts. Therapists in private clinics and public school settings trained in sensory integration activities and equipment can help people with Autism with initially intensive treatement and parents and teachers with longterm methods for embedding sensorimotor integrative activities into daily living, working and coping as people with and without Autism.

New parents can find listings of national and local (Oregon) Sensory Integration Therapy providers in the RESOURCES link directly below this one. They can help you find connections to therapists in your area.


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