Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Different Sensory Experiences, Different Perceptual Worlds

The ability to perceive accurately stimuli in the environment is basic to many areas of academic, communicative and social functioning. Although people with autism live in the same physical world and deal with the same 'raw material' their perceptual world turns out strikingly different from that of non-autistic people.

If learning depends upon sensory experience, then how do children with sensory handicaps manage to learn? In Language and Experience Barbara Landau and Lila Gleitman confront this problem head on as they attempt to describe and explain the remarkable ability of blind children to learn language without essential difficulty.

What does it mean to be human? British writers in the Victorian period found a surprising answer to this question. What is human, they discovered, is nothing more or less than the human body itself. In literature of the period, as well as in scientific writing and journalism, the notion of an interior human essence came to be identified with the material existence of the body. The organs of sensory perception were understood as crucial routes of exchange between the interior and the external worlds.

The aims of the food industry today, as in the past, are fourfold:

1. To extend the period during which a food remains wholesome (the shelf life) by preservation techniques which inhibit microbiological or biochemical changes and thus allow time for distribution, sales and home storage.

 

2. To increase variety in the diet by providing a range of attractive flavours, colours, aromas and textures in food (collectively known as eating quality, sensory characteristics or organoleptic quality); a related aim is to change the form of the food to allow further processing (for example the milling of grains to flour).

3. To provide the nutrients required for health (termed nutritional quality of a food).

4. To generate income for the manufacturing company.

Children with regulation disorders of sensory processing struggle to regulate their emotions and behaviors in response to sensory stimulation. This book explains how to recognize these disorders, which are often misdiagnosed, and offers practical ways of helping children with regulation disorders.
The authors describe the everyday experiences of those who interact with infants and children with regulation disorders of sensory processing. They explain the distinguishing characteristics, symptoms, diagnosis, assessment and treatment approaches for the disorder.