1. Social Development
2. Behavioral Differences
3. Impaired Communications
4. Sensory Integration Difficulties
5. Incidence
6. Causation
7. Interventions

Sensory Integration Difficulties

Sensory Integration Difficulties are often related to autistic spectrum disorders. You don't have to have autism to have sensory problems but many people with autism do have some kind of sensory issue. What does that mean?

Imagine you are sleeping. In a moment, someone turns a spotlight on your eyes, blasts a stereo in your ears, and pelts your skin with ice water. This would be frightening, painful and overwhelming. For a person with autism, this might occur when walking into a sunny room, when the phone rings or when someone shakes their hand.

Sensory issues are an important component of autism, and they are very individual. When an autistic child is taking what looks like a temper tantrum, it may be that they are reacting to the pain caused by bright lights of a store display, or the noise from air conditioning. For people with extreme touch sensitivities, the very act of wearing clothes can be painful. (Imagine putting a scratchy wool sweater over sun burnt skin!) To block out some of the sensory overload they experience, some people with autism 'stim'. That is, they engage in a repetitive behaviour, like rocking, tapping or hand flapping to help them calm down and feel safe in a world that can be very stressful to cope with.