Sensory Processing

What is sensory processing?

means by which individuals obtain information about the world and their own bodies

• noticing a stimulus

• recognizing or classifying a stimulus

• understanding or giving meaning to the stimulus

• responding to the stimulus

What is hyperresponsivity?

responding too intensely to stimuli

What is hyporesponsivity?

lacking necessary response to stimuli

What is the lived sensory experience?

sensory experiences happen within and through occupational engagement, people are born with biological systems and sensory capacities that are nurtured or extinguished as they develop through sociocultural environments

What is the SHARE framework?

Sensory health: A relational and embodied framework for occupation

The SHARE framework says that sensory experiences are….

• Selective and focused (body orients itself to different features of sensory environment, overflow of stimuli)

• Prereflective and habitual (as a person develops, they acquire habits for sensing their environments)

• Embodied and emplaced (recurring sensory experiences become embodied as sensory expectations)

• Relational (sensory habits develop through participation in a social world)

• Polysensorial (sensory stimuli never experienced in isolation)

• Aesthetic (repeated sensory experiences are couple with affective memories can become aesthetic preferences and orientations to the world)

• Political (sensory patterns can lead to exclusion of meaningful occupations and built environments that assume normative expectation for sensory processing)

What does the visual system do?

Provides information about an object’s properties

• shape

• size

• color

• distance

associated with community and social functioning

hard to selectively attend to

What is the lens involved with?

involved in focusing and visual acuity

What are the two types of photoreceptors?

Rods: detect motion, more prominent on the periphery

Cones: perceive color, produce sharp images in bright light

What does the auditory system