Sensory Help Now

Arousal 

This refers to our levels of alertness and the ability to maintain an optimal performance level to sustain our attention and complete tasks as the environment demands. This often fluctuates during the day, and different activities require different arousal levels.  

Auditory 

This refers to the sense of hearing.

Ayres Sensory Integration 

Ayres Sensory Integration or ASI® refers to the theory and intervention developed by Dr. Jean Ayres.

Co-Regulation 

This refers to the act of providing positive reinforcement and a good support system to help another individual to self-regulate their emotions and behaviour.

Dyspraxia 

This refers to the difficulties that individuals with sensory processing differences have with planning and coordinating their movements.

Gustatory

This refers to the sense of taste.

Interoception

This refers to sensory information from your internal organs, for example, providing information on whether you are hungry, have too much to eat, or need to go to the bathroom.

Meltdown

A meltdown is an intense response to an overwhelming situation, usually triggered by a sensory response.

Olfactory

This refers to the sense of smell.

Over-responsivity (hyper-reactivity)

This refers to having a heightened sensitivity to sensory input compared to other individuals.

Praxis

This refers to an individual's motor planning and consists of 3 steps: 1) Ideation: coming up with an idea; 2) Organisation: Planning the steps required for a task or activity; 3) Execution: Carrying out the task or activity.

Proprioception

This sense refers to how joints and muscles send messages to the brain to help coordinate movement. The proprioceptive sense also allows us to grade the force and direction of our movements. 

Self Regulation

This refers to the ability to understand and manage our own behaviours and reactions.

Sensory Discrimination

This refers to the process whereby specific qualities of sensory stimuli are perceived and meaning attributed to them. For example, touching something and realising that it is hard or soft.

Sensory Integration

This refers to our integration of sensory information.

Sensory Integration Therapy

Therapy delivered by a healthcare professional 

Sensory Modulation

This refers to the brain's ability to filter out and tune into the sensory information that it needs to make sense of the information required for participation in a task. Effective modulation means that we can ignore sensory input not relevant to the task that we are completing.

Sensory Overwhelm

This refers to the overload when your brain takes in more sensory information than you can process.

Sensory Processing

This refers to how the body receives and interprets incoming stimuli through our senses. 

Sensory Registration

This refers to the process of first noticing or attending to sensory information.

Sensory Regulation

This refers to how our brains and nervous systems integrate and interpret sensory information, enabling us to maintain optimum arousal levels.

Sensory Strategies

These are strategies to help individuals with sensory processing differences participate in daily activities by addressing the sensory requirements of the activity.

Stimming

This refers to the repetition of movements and noises.

Tactile

This refers to the sense of touch.

Under-responsivity (hypo-reactivity)

This refers to being less sensitive to sensory input compared to other individuals.

Vestibular

The vestibular sense refers to our sense of how our bodies move, our body position, and our sense of balance

Visual

This refers to seeing or sight