After 72 sessions for 3 hours per week, significantly more children aged 5-9 receiving sensory integration (SI) therapy (n=35) and perceptual motor training (n=35) showed improvement in SI functioning compared to 33 receiving no treatment. Similar effects were found for subgroups with vestibular dysfunction only (n=11, 13, and 11 respectively).…

A study assigned children aged 6-8 with sensory integration (SI) dysfunction to 3 groups: 35 used sensory modalities, 32 received psychomotor (PM) training, and 13 no intervention. SI and PM administered one hour per week for six months proved equally effective in improving academic and motor performance but had little effect on self-esteem. (SK)

Retrospective analysis of videotape recordings taken at 9 to 12 months of 11 children with autism, 10 with developmental disabilities, and 11 typically developing children found that nine behavioral items, in combination, discriminated the three groups 94 percent of the time. Results support early identification of autism and that infant…

This article notes the enthusiastic reception received by auditory integration training (AIT) for children with a wide variety of disorders including autism but raises concerns about this alternative treatment practice. It offers reasons for cautious evaluation of AIT prior to clinical implementation and summarizes current research findings. (DB)

We investigate how vision affects haptic performance when task-relevant visual cues are reduced or excluded. The task was to remember the spatial location of six landmarks that were explored by touch in a tactile map. Here, we use specially designed spectacles that simulate residual peripheral vision, tunnel vision, diffuse light perception, and…

The purpose of this article is to describe the characteristics of modulation disorders that have been reported with sensory integration dysfunction and provide strategies for supporting positive development and engagement. Although not well understood, scientists are beginning to link structural and chemical imbalances of the brain with responses…

Visual speech cues presented in synchrony with discrepant auditory speech cues are usually combined to a surprisingly clear unitary percept that corresponds with neither of the two sensory inputs (the McGurk illusion). This audiovisual integration process is commonly believed to be highly autonomous and robust to cognitive intervention, unlike the…

Television producers, across all types of programming, assume young viewers can parallel process simultaneously presented messages. For instance, television news producers appear to believe that young viewers can attend to weather icons, lexical news crawls, and sports scores while they also attend to news anchors who present the news.…

Verbal-to-spatial associations in working memory may index a core capacity for abstract information limited in the amount concurrently retained. However, what look like associative, abstract representations could instead reflect verbal and spatial codes held separately and then used in parallel. We investigated this issue in two experiments on…

As a child matures from infancy to early childhood, a shift occurs in his sensory hierarchy from tactile to auditory to visual. The transition between the predominance of the auditory sense and visual sense takes place in about grades four and five. Although the sensory systems do not function singularly (but are integrated in the total action…

Investigating the effects of marijuana on human psychological functioning, this study differs from previous research in two ways: 1) it is concerned with relatively complex cognitive processes; 2) it has a theoretical rationale. The general hypothesis of the study states that marijuana will impair its user's ability to form and use abstract…

Presented and discussed is a model of sensory and intersensory components related to information processing and expressive activity in children with learning problems. (CL)