All our children learn new things through the stimuli around them — through hearing, sight, taste, smell, and touch, the stimulations we receive through our body.
When someone calls “Moné” from our left side, we turn and look towards the left. When someone says “come here,” we understand it and move in that direction. Paying attention to all these things itself is our sensory processing.
When we respond to the sensory stimulations around us and behave in an adaptive way, new connections are formed in our brain and we learn new things.
Sensory Processing in Autism
But in children with autism, their sensory processing does not function appropriately. Many times, when they are called, they do not look, and when spoken to, they may behave as if they are not paying attention.
Instead, if they see a visual, they will go and look there, or if they hear the sound of their favorite advertisement on TV, they will run to it wherever they are.
The processing in their brain works differently, so they do not respond quickly to our spoken language or the social instructions we give, nor does their processor function correctly to process them.
Understanding the "Processor"
Many times, parents of children with autism think that when the child does not respond to being called, it is because the child cannot hear.
In fact, they can hear normally, they can see, they can taste, they can smell. The receptors have the ability to receive stimuli, but it is the brain that processes the received messages.
When the processor does not function properly, the child does not respond to what they see, hear, or smell.
How Therapy Helps
It is to improve this processing that we work through therapy.
When children get proper and scientific therapies like occupational therapy and sensory integration therapy in an adaptive way, the processing delay can be reduced.
The child will start to respond a little faster.
When processing becomes a little better, the child can respond faster to the instructions we give, understand new instructions, and learn new things.