Imagine that a speaking voice sounded to you as loud as a foghorn or that walking down a flight of stairs gave you vertigo or that a cheeseburger tasted like slime-topped cardboard. If you can, you might understand how an individual with Sensory Processing Disorder might experience the world. A sensory diet, activities designed to help your brain process sensory input, is one way to cope with SPD.
History
Dr. Jean Ayres pioneered the treatment of SPD in the mid-1950s. She “formulated a theory of Sensory Integration Dysfunction and led other occupational therapists in developing intervention strategies,” reports occupational therapist Carol Kranowitz. In 1998, Kranowitz continued Ayres’s work, making SPD and its treatment accessible and understandable by parents and teachers with her book, “The Out-of-Sync Child.” Patricia Wilbarger, another occupational-therapy groundbreaker, first used the term “sensory diet.”
Sensory Processing Disorder
Sensory processing is the way in which your nervous system organizes information your body receives from the world. In "The Out-of-Sync Child," Kranowitz writes, “Sensory stimulation may cause difficulty in one’s movement, emotions, attention or adaptive responses.” If you cannot filter out noise from your environment, you might find it hard to concentrate, or if you lack body awareness, you might violate others’ personal space. A sensory diet might affect your self-regulation, sleep, diet and attention as well as social functioning.
Purpose
The American Occupational Therapy Association defines occupational therapy as a “science-driven, evidence-based profession that enables people of all ages to live life to its fullest by helping them promote, help or live better with illness, injury or disability.” An occupational therapist creates a sensory diet, or a set of activities, for you to help your body modulate the messages it receives so you can better regulate your responses to those messages.
Benefits
Studies verify that a sensory diet works to alleviate and balance some of the issues arising from SPD. A press release from Temple University cited a 2005 study indicating that children with ADHD benefited from sensory activities, such as deep pressure, because many of those children also had some level of sensory-processing dysfunction. The 2007 Hall/Case-Smith study confirmed that “therapeutic listening combined with a sensory diet appears effective in improving behaviors related to sensory processing in children with SPD and visual-motor impairments.”
Features
Individualized sensory diets depend on your needs and your responsiveness to stimuli. If body awareness is your challenge, you likely will do strenuous pushing, pulling or lifting. For movement issues, you might engage in spinning or swinging activities. If tastes or textures are a problem, you may gradually increase your tolerance for the aversive sensations. Other sensory diet “menu” items target auditory or visual processing as needed.
References
- “The Out-of-Sync Child”; Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A.; 2005
- PediaStaff: Activities for the Sensory Diet
- American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc.: About Occupational Therapy Podcast
- Temple University Health Sciences Center: Study Finds ADHD Improves With Sensory Intervention
- Praxis Education Center: The Effect of Sound-Based Intervention on Children With Sensory Processing Disorders and Visual-Motor Delays
