What is a Sensory Disorder?

First, some background information.  We learn about our world through our seven senses.  These include the well known five senses: vision, hear, taste, touch, and smell.  The two lesser known "hidden senses" are proprioception (your body position awareness) and vestibular (your movement sense).

Proprioception tells you where your body is in space.  For example, without looking, where is your right foot right now?  Through your proprioceptive sense, most people intuitively know the location of their feet and other parts of their body.

Your vestibular sense tells you where you are moving, how far, how fast, and in what direction.  Here's a simple demonstration of your vestibular sense:  with your eyes closed the whole time, place an object on the table, move your hand away, then pick it up again.  Your vestibular and proprioceptive senses work together to allow you to accomplish this task.

Now that you know about all the senses, we define sensory integration as the organization of sensory input for use.  Through sensory integration, our senses work with the other parts of our nervous system so that we can interact with the environment--this is the filter through which we perceive the world.  A neat aspect of sensory integration is that this develops unconsciously in the normally developing child.  We begin taking in all of this information before we are born, and our brains process the information without conscious effort.

Sensory Processing Disorder (previously known as Dysfunction of Sensory Processing) happens when a 'glitch' occurs in the central nervous system.  The brain cannot analyze, organize, and connect all the sensory messages it receives in the normal fashion—the filter through which we perceive the world fails to work properly.  A child with this condition might have trouble responding to this information in a meaningful, consistent way. 

Sensory disorders may also contribute to learning problems by providing constant distractions which interfere with the learning environment (over-response of the senses) or he/she may need more input to comprehend the key points of the lesson (under-response).

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