Sensory integration therapy

Sensory integration therapy (SIT) was developed in the 1970 to treat children with sensory processing disorder (sometimes called sensory integrative dysfunction). Sensory Integration Therapy is based on A. Jean Ayres's Sensory Integration Theory, which proposes that sensory-processing is linked to emotional regulation, learning, behavior, and participation in daily life. Sensory integration is the process of organizing sensations from the body and environmental stimuli.

A. Jean Ayres, an occupational therapist, developed SIT in the 1970s. The theory describes the following:

Sensory integration theory is used to explain why individuals behave in particular ways, plan intervention to ameliorate particular difficulties, and predict how behavior will change as a result of intervention. Dr. Ayres defines sensory integration as the organization of an individual's senses for use. The brain’s ability to organize sensations supports a person in moving, learning, and reacting to situations appropriately.

Individuals with sensory-processing difficulties often experience delayed or impeded typical behaviors and functioning as a result of interferences in neurological processing and integration of sensory inputs. Sensory dysfunction affects the neurological processing of sensory information and sensory systems which causes negative impacts on learning and development. Ayres Sensory Integration (ASI) highlights the critical influence that sensory-processing has on a child's growth and development. It contributes to the understanding of how sensation affects learning, social-emotional development, and neurophysiological processes, such as motor performance, attention, and arousal.

ASI has been studied by different professions on diverse levels, such as by occupational therapists and researchers as a foundation for occupational performance and participation, and by psychologists on a cellular level as multi-sensory integration.

As an intervention approach, it is used as "a clinical frame of reference for the assessment and treatment of people who have functional disorders in sensory processing".

Individuals with sensory processing disorder or sensory integrative dysfunction experience problems with their sensory systems, also known as basic senses of touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, body coordination, and movement against gravity. They might also experience difficulties in movement, coordination, and sensing where one's body is in a given space, also known as proprioception. Each individual sensory system has specific receptors or cells within the body that deliver messages to the brain. These receptors are located in specific parts of the body - gustatory/taste (mouth), olfactory/smell (nose), visual (eye), auditory (ear), and vestibular (inner ear). Other receptors are spread throughout the body - tactile (skin) and proprioception (muscles and joints).

Sensory Integration Therapy, also known as sensory-based treatments or interventions, are designed to provide sensory activities or experiences to help individuals respond better to environmental stimuli (i.e., sensory input). The main goal and priority for the use of sensory integration therapies is to improve internal sensory processing, improve self-regulation, develop adaptive functioning skills, and to help the child successfully become participate in daily life experiences and activities. Sensory-based interventions or activities are structured and individualized per each child's specific individual needs. They range from passive activities (i.e., wearing a weighted vest, weighted blanket, receiving hugs, playing with shaving cream) to active activities (i.e., spinning around, jumping on a trampoline, running, climbing, walking on patterned blocks).