Sensory Differences Video Transcript

Hello! Welcome to this video on Sensory Differences in Autism from Islington Social Communication Team.

 

Differences in sensory processing are very common in autism. They are part of the current diagnostic criteria that we use in clinic. Although sensory differences are not required for a diagnosis, they are so common that they are relevant to discuss and be aware of as potentially part of your child’s presentation.

While people who are not autistic can also have sensory needs, recent studies suggest such differences are about 6 or 7 times higher in autism.

 

Various figures have been reported for the percentage of autistic people who have sensory processing differences, but it seems to be well over half with some studies reporting figures as high as 94%.

Again, when we are thinking about sensory differences, it’s helpful here to think of the brain as like a computer. The information comes in from the environment via our senses. It goes to our brain to process the information, and make sense of it so that we can respond to it. Our response can be either a motor (physical) response or a thought.

Depending on how this processing happens, in autism senses may be over sensitive (meaning sharper than normal), or under sensitive (meaning less sharp). Sometimes they may be both under and over sensitive at different times.

So, what are the sensory systems? Usually, we learn at school that there are five main senses. Sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste.

But despite what we learned in school there are in fact three more important senses that are very important in our daily lives. Many autistic children also have difficulty with these senses.

Our body awareness is made up of our sense of touch, together with the feedback we get through our muscles and joints. These two senses, working well together, give us good body awareness, which lets us do things like judge how much force to use to pick up a bottle.

If the brain estimate is wrong, we might use too much force. It would also help us to tie an apron behind our backs when we can’t see our hands.

Children with sensory processing difficulties can be under responsive in terms of their touch. This can result in poor body awareness, with, for example, a child constantly bumping into things or not noticing when they have got food on their face. They may try to balance out this lack of feedback that they get from the environment by seeking out a lot of movement from activities like jumping and climbing.

Being over responsive to touch may make things like hugs from other people difficult to tolerate, and activities like washing and brushing hair or cutting nails may feel horrible. Children who are sensitive to touch might not like touching messy or wet foods and hate getting dirty. They may want to wash their hands a lot or change their clothes if they get water or food on them.

The second sense is our sense of movement and balance.

This is the sensation of gravitation, body rotation and movement. We get this information from the systems in our inner ear which give us an awareness of our body’s balance and the movement of our head.

This sense helps to stop objects from becoming blurry when we move because we know how we are moving and can adjust the focus of our eyes to match. It also helps us to keep our balance and posture for walking, running, climbing and riding a bike or a scooter.

Finally, we also have an internal sense. This gives us a sense of how we feel inside and information about things like when we are hungry, if we need to use the toilet, if we are hot or cold or have any pain.

Differences in this area can impact on our sleep and eating as well as things like toileting.

It also has an emotional aspect to it. For example, when we start becoming angry, we often have an internal feeling which signals to us that we need to stop and do something about it. Having butterflies in our tummies helps to signal to us, perhaps, that we need to talk to someone about our worries. 

 

When we are sad, we often feel it physically around our heart. There are individual differences between all of us in terms of how we experience these sensations, but there is some suggestion that autistic children tend to have less awareness of these internal feelings. This might mean that it’s harder for them to spot what they are feeling and they may miss the opportunity to share their worries or anger before reaching the stage of a meltdown.

Our sensory experiences also affect our levels of alertness. Most of us are able to judge how alert we are feeling and do things to change it if needed. In our team we often think of alertness using an analogy of how fast our engines are running. The blue car in the middle is “just right” and represents how we feel when we are calm and able to concentrate. We hope this is how you are feeling now as you are watching this video!

 

The engine with the tortoise represents times when our engine is running “low” and we feel sleepy or under active. This might be how we feel after a big lunch or when we’re very tired or feeling sad and low. When we feel like this, we might do things to alert ourselves more like getting up and moving around or drinking a cup of coffee.

Finally, the car being driven fast represents how we feel when our engine is running on “high”, which is when we are over stimulated and over active, and we find it difficult settle, to focus and concentrate. When we feel like this, we might help ourselves to calm down by going somewhere quiet or taking some deep breaths.

Autistic children can have difficulty regulating themselves to keep calm and focused and, in this middle, “Just right” type state.

As a result, you might see behaviour sometimes where they are very active and busy and cannot sit still, or alternatively, if they are under active, they may tend to be quite passive and not move or do too much.

They may need support from parents and teachers or sometimes from an Occupational Therapist, to help them regulate, using different activities to support their sensory processing. This is something you can get more advice on by looking at the “Advice and Strategies” page on our website.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video from the social communication team. We really hope that you have found it useful.

 

Thank you.