A Quick Fix to Over-Sensitivity

Today was a dentist day. Now, in spite of being over-sensitive to just about everything, I am good with going to the dentist. As a child, I had a great dentist who told me to focus on something else while he worked on my teeth. I did so and got through the procedure without too much discomfort. It was a good lesson.

But I didn't generalize on it until much later. I was in the midst of a home remodeling project and hammered my thumb instead of the nail :{  I was dramatically in pain. A friend told me I was a wuss, and that I should focus my attention on something else until the pain died down. I did it, and miracle of miracles, it worked. How did he know that and I didn't. He had played sports. I had not. Sensory kids don't.do.sports because it's noisy and you get bumped a lot. And that's the point of this post sensory kids naturally react differently to pain, bumps and sounds and they avoid activities like sports where kids get so many life lessons, including "think about something else".

If Zoey is playing in the sprinkler and gets water in her face, she can focus on it with discomfort, or she can shift her attention outward to something else, like the sprinkler itself, her chest or her hands. If Martin is standing next to an alarm that sounds for several seconds, he can bring his attention back into his body (and his hands over his ears) and in that way stay grounded.

This particular lesson is a game changer, and here's why. Our brain operates with great efficiency, always trying to guess what to be ready for. If I focus on sensory discomforts, the brain says, "That's what she wants to pay attention to", and so it prioritizes the brain's focus to discomforts. On the other hand, if I am able to ignore the discomfort, and focus on something else, discomfort loses priority. What a concept. Discomfort loses priority, and we don't attend to it. What a great lesson for our kids!

By the way the circuitry that processes priorities is in the right anterior insular cortex (rAI). It feeds priorities to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) which takes action: behaviors, motor and emotional reactions and cognitive redirection. ....but that's a post for another day.

Thoughts on Craving

Just a short post today. I'd like to refer back to the last two posts (here and here) which discussed stereotypy and sensory craving. I forgot to mention in the second post that the intervention used by Rispoli, et al. is the same approach I take to sensory craving in my book, Hands on Activities for Children with Autism and Sensory Disorders. In the book, I discuss how to explore sensory activities to find a preferred type of activity. The book also contains 50 or so fun interventions including crafts.

Pre-Satiation Technique for Stereotypy and Craving?

In the previous post, I looked at the blurred lines across the (ASD) autism symptoms of stereotypy and sensory craving. This post focuses on an intervention that may help both types of symptoms. The intervention is a well-conceived combination of behavioral and sensory techniques that comes from a study by Rispoli, et al (2013).

The research team studied three children with stereotypic behaviors. Five-year-old Antonio has autism and vocal stereotypy in the form of a high-pitched squeal. Twelve-year-old Jeff has intellectual disabilities and seizure disorder. He hits tables, chairs and walls repeatedly with various hand-held objects. Four-year-old Joel has autism and bounces small things (balls, toys and breakable objects) onto the floor. 

All three boys were unable to engage in demanding group tasks because of their stereotypy. The researchers posed the question: If each child were allowed to engage in his behavior until he stopped of his own volition (was satiated), would he then be able to engage in the demanding group tasks.

To test this, they set up a three phases process. First they analyzed each child’s behavior to see if he was a good fit for the study. Second, they looked for toys that matched the child's stereotypy and had him play with them to discover which toy was preferred. Last, they tested over a 4-5 week period to see if pre-satiation with the preferred toy before a demanding 15-minute group activity decreased the amount of stereotypy during the group activity and allowed each boy to focus on his work. (The answers were yes and yes.) The study while small used good methods; it was a blind, controlled study.

The implementation details are below. The interventions (step three) can easily be done at home or school by a parent or teacher. The first two steps are the domain of behavioral or sensory therapists, but may be accomplished by an astute parent or teacher. Let's look at the details for putting this in place.

Step 1: Analysis

1.     Analysis: You note a stereotypic behavior that appears to have a sensory component. Note which senses appear to be stimulated by the behavior. Remember that movement is also sensed by the body. It is the combination of the vestibular sense (head movement) and the proprioceptive sense (body movement). Unless you discover otherwise (see the "unmatched preference" of step three), assume that the child is craving sensation and that his stereotypic activities are satisfying that craving.

2.   To establish a baseline, count the occurrences of the behavior: count the number of times and the total amount of time he engages in stereotypy during a demanding activity. Also note when (time, place, type of activity) the child engages in the behavior.

Step 2: Discovering the Preferred Object

 

1. Identify possible preferred activities for satiation tasks: Put together some optional activities for him to engage in that might be just as engaging as the stereotypy. Attempt to find activities that stimulate the exact same senses in the same way. A good preferred activity may be more intense than his current one.

2.   Put all of the candidate preferred activities (toys to help with stimming) in an otherwise empty room with the child on a few occasions. Let him play and see if a preferred object emerges.
       If you are unable to find a preferred activity that is similar to the stereotypy, then try something else, perhaps access to a computer or a cause-and-effect toy. This is called an unmatched preference. The preferred toy for Antonio was a musical camera. Jeff was given an object he could use to strike walls and tables that would not hurt them. The choice for Joel was obvious; he was given a ball.

Here are examples:

a.       For the child who lines things up, show him how to stack and line-up Legos, and see if that becomes a preferred activity. This is a big one for many kids.

b.      For the child that flicks his wrist, try a punch balloon.

c.       If he is in constant motion, try a small trampoline, a swing (this is huge!), climbing equipment or a ball pit (if you have access to one). An older child may like riding a bike—perhaps on a bicycle-built-for-two with the parent in front.

d.      Finally, an example of an unmatched preference: the child flicks his finger, but you’ve discovered that given the opportunity, he would play with a cause and effect toy for a long time. This is his preferred activity.

3.     Practice with the preferred activity: On successive sessions, let the child engage in the activity for as long as he wants--until he has had enough. You will need to know how long it typically takes for him to be satiated, so keep track of the time. This is the satiation time.

Step 3: The Intervention

The intervention can be done prior to a demanding activity, as a way of helping the child to self- regulate.

First, let the child have unlimited time doing the preferred activity, that is let him do it until he is satiated. Let’s say that he usually requires 22 minutes to be satiated, and then plan to have him start the preferred activity about 25 minutes prior to the next task.

Afterwards, as he engages in the demanding tasks, track his behavior to see if his stereotypy has diminished. Counting the number of times and the total amount of time he engages in stereotypy during the demanding activity. Do this over a period of several sessions. If it appears to be helping, continue with the intervention on a daily basis. If he acclimates to the preferred activity, then try replacing it with something a little more intense or demanding. In some cases, you may see that he no longer desires the preferred activity and that his stereotypy has decreased, as well. This good outcome is possibly the result of increased sensory integration skills.

In the study, the child was used as his own control. By performing the intervention every other session, his behavior on days that he was satiated could be compared to behavior on days that he received no intervention and was not satiated. They noted that after a few weeks, the behavior appeared to improve both on the days that the intervention was done and when it was not done.

Unfortunately, the researchers did not carry out the study long enough to see if the intervention would lead to extinction of the behavior--which is a shame, because it might do so. I have seen satiation work as therapy with children in my setting. I separately treated wo children who craved movement. When given unlimited time on a swing twice a week, both lost interest in the swing after a month. One boy with this result was then capable of sitting at attention in the classroom without getting out of his chair on  most days. Sensory integration theory suggests this outcome, but to my knowledge, this type of scenario has not been documented in the journals.

How long did the effect of the intervention last? Fifteen minutes? A few hours? The whole day? The authors don’t discuss this, but the intervention is similar in nature to the sensory diet which is thought to last 2 hours. In the sensory diet, children are given 15 minutes (or so) of sensory stimulation usually including  a movement activity every 2 hours as a means of increasing self-regulation. A significant difference between satiation and the sensory diet is the inclusion of movement which is on its own self-regulatory. (BTW, the sensory diet has not yet been sufficiently studied to validate its efficacy, but it is generally accepted as a good practice.)

I still have additional articles to review from Behavior Modification's 2013 special issue  on Stereotypy. So stay tuned for that.

An update: Rachel Scalzo's 2015 PhD thesis on satiation of stereotypy has made a significant addition to the literature by clarifying the intervention process. I'll keep an eye out for future journal articles from her. In the meantime, here is her thesis abstract.

References

Rispoli, M., Camargo, S. H., Neely, L., Gerow, S., Lang, R., Goodwyn, F., & Ninci, J. (2014). Pre-session satiation as a treatment for stereotypy during group activities. Behavior Modification, 392-411.

Environmental Enrichment (Multisensory Enrichment for Autism!)

Environmental Enrichment (EE) is an awesome protocol that has been shown to decrease autism symptoms and sensory issues and to increase receptive language and cognitive skills in children with ASD of all ages. It was designed as a low-cost program for parents to do at home. But, it can also be done in a school setting, or better yet, shared between home and school.

EE is a 6-month protocol with activities that change every two weeks. Parents/teachers select several multi-sensory activities from a list of 34 activities and do them for the two week period. They work with the child twice a day for about 15-20 minutes each. As the sessions progress, the child gains awareness of sensation and gains multi-sensory integration skills. The activities also build joint-attention skills, which are known to decrease autism severity.

The protocol is simply described in two published papers (listed below). They are open-access (available for free online). In addition, my Hands-On Activities book devotes 80 pages to the protocol, providing perhaps 200 activity variations and talking through program implementation details.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

References:

Woo, C. C., & Leon, M. (2013). Environmental enrichment as an effective treatment for autism: A randomized controlled trial. Behavioral Neuroscience, 487-97.

Woo, C., Donnelly, J. H., Steinberg-Epstein, R. R., & Leon, M. (2015). Environmental enrichment as a therapy for autism: a clinical trial replication and extension. Behavioral Neuroscience, 412-422.

My latest book, Hands-On Activities for Children with Autism and Sensory Disorders is available through my publisher, PESI.com, and at Amazon. It has all new interventions and focuses on sensory, especially multi-sensory, activities. Topics include Environmental Enrichment for children with autism, sensory enrichment for all children, and aerobics for the classroom. It's great stuff. Check it out!

As I begin to work on my next book: self-regulation strategies for the Pre-K to grade 2, I'll be previewing topics in my blog posts. So stay tuned for lots of great new material!

Teresa