SENSORY INTEGRATIVE DYSFUNCTION

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• Introduction
• What is Sensory Integrative Dysfunction
• Developmental delays and lack of developmentally appropriate experiences
  
  • Pre-natal development
  • Post-natal influences
  • Lack of developmentally appropriate experiences
• Characteristics of Sensory Integrative Dysfunction
• Attention and regulatory problems
• Sensory defensiveness
• Activity levels
• Behaviour
• Using the Preschool curriculum to help children with Sensory Integrative Dysfunction
• Therapy and activities
• Conclusion

Introduction

Sensory integration is a function of our brains that we use continuously in order to accomplish our daily tasks. Sensory integration is the ability of the brain to take all the information coming from all our senses - touch, movement, taste, smell, hearing and vision - and to use this new information in combination with prior information consisting of memories, knowledge, feelings and experiences in our brain to make a meaningful response. This response can be an appropriate social or emotional response, solving a difficult problem, merely using movement to avoid collision with someone in the supermarket isle, saving the food from burning on the stove or the bath from running over. Most of the basic simpler actions often take place without our consciously thinking about it. Our brain decides the appropriate action and mobilises the necessary skills to accomplish what needs to be done.From this explanation it is clear that sensory integration is one of the main tasks of the brain. Stephens (1997) says that ... sensory integration occurs in the central nervous centre and is generally thought to take place in the mid-brain and brainstem levels in complex interactions of the portions of the brain responsible for such activities as co-ordination, attention, arousal levels, autonomic functioning, emotions, memory... If we remember that basic senses like movement, touch, smell and taste are the main senses the brain uses in the early years to gather information and learn about the surrounding world and the people in the world, we can surmise that dysfunction in these areas must be present or starts fairly early in the baby's and toddler's life.

What is Sensory Integrative Dysfunction

Sensory Integrative Dysfunction is exactly the opposite from what is described in the previous paragraph. Carol Stock Kranowitz, the author of the book Out-of-Sync child, remarks that the young child never wilfully wants to behave inappropriately. Children seek approval of their emotionally important adults like moths seek light. Children can also not help not to want to learn because their brains compel them to seek new information and experiences and make sense from their life-world experiences. In the same vein, young children seek social contact and want approval and social acceptance from their peers. Yet, we all know children that seem unable to learn even though they are seemingly bright and intelligent. They seem to continuously do the wrong thing or the inappropriate reaction that isolates them from their caregivers and their peers.

Dr A Jean Ayres (Stephens, 1997) was an occupational therapist and academic who, after her own traumatic, trouble filled childhood, became interested in this field. She was the first one to research and describe the theories and frame of reference of sensory integration in the 1960s. She used several analogies to describe the chaos in the brain when sensory integration does not take place ... Good sensory processing enables all the impulses to flow easily and reach their destination quickly. Sensory integrative dysfunction is a sort of 'traffic jam' in the brain. Some bits of sensory information get 'tied up in traffic' and certain parts of the brain do not get the sensory information they need to do their jobs... (Ayres, p. 51 in Stephens, 1997).

From this description we can deduct that there are two kinds of processes at work in the brain. The one process we can call the "input process" where the brain receives information from the senses. If the senses, or some of the senses, provide the brain with inadequate information or even completely wrong information, the "output" or reaction will naturally be inappropriate. The second process is the "output" process. It may happen that the senses are providing the brain with correct information but that the brain processes this information, for whatever reason, inadequately. In this case, the reaction will also be incorrect. What we need to remember is that the young child, or even the older learner and sometimes even adults, have very little control over these processes if left to themselves. To blame the child for the incorrect response is in fact compounding the child's inability to make sense and react appropriately. Thousands of children are labelled "naughty", "maladjusted" and "impossible". They get labels and become the outcasts and black sheep of their small communities. We often hear about children that are expelled from preschool. The majority of these children are victims of an inability and ignorance on the part of the adults in the learning environment to understand Sensory Integrative Dysfunction.

Kranowitz says: Until I learned about SI Dysfunction, I could not find a pattern in these children. The only common thread - and this troubled me most - was their sadness. Whether their modus operandi was hostility, aggression, anger, frustration, tuning-out, whining, silliness or wildly inappropriate gusto, they all seemed to sense that they weren't like the other kids. They didn't feel a sense of belonging (Martin, 1999).

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