Sensory Integration

What is Sensory Integration?

Sensory integration is your body’s ability to receive sensory information from the environment, process that information accurately and respond appropriately to the information received.

What are the different types of sensory systems?

• • Visual- information received through your eyes
  • Olfactory- information received through your nose
  • Gustatory- information received through your mouth
  • Tactile-  information received through touch receptors in your skin
  • Proprioceptive- information received from joints/extremities regarding body position in space
  • Vestibular- information received from the inner ear regarding balance and movement

How are Sensory Integration concerns assessed or evaluated?

Within the educational setting, systems can be evaluated using standardized assessments as well as parent/teacher interview, and clinical observations.  A referral for an evaluation would be a result of a PPT recommendation due to sensory concerns impacting a student’s educational performance.

How are Sensory Integration concerns addressed?

First, and most important, the identified sensory concerns must be impacting a student’s educational performance in order to be addressed within school.  For example, a child who is unable to tolerate tooth brushing and/or hair washing, may indeed have sensory integration difficulties, however these do not impact educational performance and therefore will not be addressed within school.  For sensory concerns that do affect educational performance, therapeutic activities are used to provide the appropriate sensory input to the child’s system.