The sensory world of autistic children

Silinganisiwe Ndlovu

Part 1
What is Autism?
Autism is a developmental condition that is often characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication and repetitive behaviours. Some children and adults with Autism are fully able to perform all activities of daily living while others require substantial support to perform basic activities.

Autism and Sensory Perceptions
Sensory input travels to the brain through our neural network, where it is interpreted and used to formulate a response.  Sensory opening usually occurs without serious thought. It operates in the background and most people never stop to ponder how their senses function. Even though there are a number of sensory systems active in our bodies the five common ones are those of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

A child with Autism experiences sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes and gravity in a manner profoundly different from that of typically- developing children and adults. Every minute of daily life for a child on the autism spectrum can be a battle against invasive sensations that overwhelm their hyper-acute sensory systems. Or conversely, their senses may be hypo-active, requiring major effort to alert their bodies so that learning and social interaction can take place. Layered on top of that may be inability to filter and process more than one sensory modality at a time. 

Hypersensitive children
These children are oversensitive to input and are often overwhelmed thus always seek to avoid sensory input of touch, sight, hear, taste, sound and other senses as these often overwhelm them. 

Hyposensitive Children
These children are under sensitive to stimulation, are sensation seeking and are always looking for more stimulation. 
Some children do exhibit both hypersensivity and hyposensitivity. They may be oversensitive and avoiding to some sensations but seeking to others.

Sensory characteristics of autistic children and strategies that can be used to enhance their functioning.
Learners who are hyposensitive to light usually like bright colours and glare. This is because objects often appear dark, or lose some of their features, whilst hypersensitive children may squint or seem uncomfortable in sunlight and glare. They often have distorted vision where by objects and bright lights appear and jump around, images appear fragmented thus making it easier and preferably to focus on detail rather than the whole object.

Such children can be assisted to function better by making changes to the environment such as reducing fluorescent lighting, providing sunglasses, using black out curtains and or if at school by creating a workstation in the classroom with high walls or divides on both sides to block out visual distractions.

Silinganisiwe Ndlovu is an Educational Psychology Intern
Email: ndlovusling@gmail.com