All About The Senses

Whilst on a recent training session run by the National Autistic Society , ‘Wee and Poo in the Right Place: Autism anContinence’ (more on this in future blogs!), I was reminded about how key our senses are to understanding and interpreting not just the world around us but also the world inside us and the impact that sensory processing difficulties can have on people with autism or sensory processing disorders.

We are of course all familiar with the 5 basic senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing.  Then there are two further senses that get explored a lot especially when we talk about autism; the vestibular system that provides our sense of balance, spatial orientation, rotational and linear movement and a stable base for visual function; the proprioceptive system that provides

feedback about our body’s position in the space around us as well as body awareness.  Our sensory systems can be ‘hyper’, or over sensitive or ‘hypo/under’ sensitive to sensory stimuli.  Check out some of our strategies here for helping to regulate the proprioceptive and vestibular systems.

There is extensive current research into our sensory system that is suggesting that we have many, many more senses that just these 7 and a term that encompasses many of these senses is ‘Interoception’, sometimes know as the eighth sensory system.

This system encompasses senses that provide feedback, for example, about pain experienced by the body and most interestingly, when thinking about toileting, provide feedback to the brain about the need for the toilet. 

An excellent book I read recently about Interoception offers great, practical strategies for supporting self-regulation of our internal sensory systems.

‘Interoception: The Eighth Sensory System’ by Kelly Mahler brings together a range of current research on interoception and clearly explains the impact that sensory processing difficulties in this area can have on people with autism.  There are a range of practical assessments and strategies that can be easily implemented in the classroom and some of the activities are really creative.  The appendices also offer resources that can be used with children to build their self-awareness of how to improve their self-regulation.

So if you have a child in your class or at home who never seems to know when they need the toilet or if they are hungry or full this book can offer some great ideas on how to support self-regulation as well as develop understanding around the ‘eighth sense’.