C
Changes with Sound Stimulation
What I saw then and continue to see regularly were the following.
Improved postural functions
A
uditory stimulation and sensory integration techniques help individuals with Autism/PDD by making it easier for them to process sensory information more accurately. Children whose systems have been striving to shut out sensory stimulation begin to relax, and are able to more readily connect to those around them. Most children experience relief from extreme sensitivities and tactile defensiveness, plus begin to have an increased sense of self. This gives them the comfort and awareness they need to be at ease in their bodies and in their surroundings. Children make gains in the areas of sensory integration, auditory processing, and motor planning. They make gains in self-help skills as well as language.
Families of Autistic/PDD children often describe their lives as a restricted existence. Loving these children can be a confusing maze as it takes a lot of understanding to relate to a child with such a sensitive nature. If a channel of engagement is not found however, they will continue to withdraw.
N
eed for a comprehensive model:
Autism and PDD impact the individual in so many parameters of human performance that a comprehensive model is needed.
We need to pull from many areas to understand autism and PDD.
We need to understand the:
Look at the concepts about the origins of intelligence and how it is influenced by the evolution of praxis and language.
We will also look more specifically at praxis and language,
In order to have a comprehensive model we need to pull from behavioral theories, cognitive theories, linguistic theories, motor learning theories, to name a few, in order to understand this complex disorder.
Jean Ayres should be created with providing us with an extensive research base but we need to be willing to look beyond this. I think she would want us to.
As she said in the forward to a lecture on dyspraxia which was given a few years before her death
The hallmark feature of autism is impaired social interaction, and social interaction is dependent on an interaction between all these abilities, yet unfortunately we are often limited in the functions we can address with the autistic child depending on the setting we work in.
Talk about my first experiences of Sensory Integration and Adult Psychiatry. What happened when I moved to pediatrics and tried to work with the autistic children.
The more I look at autistic children the more I am convience that it is a disorder of both auditory processing and praxis
We will look at how communication is dependent on both praxis and language and bring Autism and PDD into a framework of a communication disorder not either a emotional or a neurological disorder.
We need to understand what is uniquely human about these qualities in human evolution, and how they are especially relevant to an understanding of autism and PDD.
Both praxis and language are uniquely human performance abilities in that they do not exist in lower mammels. There is something about how they evolved and effected each other in their evolution that is relevant to our understanding of the disorder of autism
Look at how sensory integration disorders impact on emotional development and on the development of two way communication needed for relationships.
"While these are my final words on the subject,
they must not be the final words."
I believe as Occupational Therapist we have a novel perspective on this disorder and have unique skills to offer in the understanding and treatment of autism and PDD.
We need to be able to expand and customize our thinking to this population. Although Jean Ayres saw commonalties in the neurological pattern between learning disabilities and autism she also acknowledged major differences. We need to develop our own clinical observations and research to understand these differences.