Evaluation: The use of assessment tools, such as tests and observations, to measure a person’s developmental level and individual skills, or to identify a possible difficulty.
Excitation: The neurological process of activating incoming sensory receptors to promote connections between sensory input and behavioral output.
Expressive language: The spoken or written words and phrases that one produces to communicate feelings and thoughts to others.
Extension: The pull of the muscles away from the front of the body; straightening or stretching.
External senses: The senses of touch, smell, taste, vision and hearing; the environmental senses.
Exteroception: Referring to the five external senses.
Eye-hand coordination: The efficient teamwork of the eyes and hands, necessary for activities such as playing with toys, dressing, and writing.
Eye-motor skills—Movements of muscles in the eyes; also ocular-motor skills.
Fixation—Steady attention on an object.
Saccades—Efficient movement of the eyes from point to point.
Focusing—Accommodating one’s vision smoothly between near and distant objects.
Smooth pursuits (tracking)—Following a moving object or line of print with the eyes.
Far senses: The external or environmental senses of vision and hearing.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: A set of symptoms, including growth retardation, facial abnormalities, mental retardation and developmental delays, caused by the mother’s chronic alcoholism during pregnancy.
Fight-or-flight response (or fight-flight-freeze-fright response): The instinctive reaction to defend oneself from real or perceived danger by becoming aggressive, withdrawing, or being unable to move.
Fine-motor: Referring to movement of the small muscles in the fingers, toes, eyes, and tongue.
Fixing: Pressing one’s elbows into one’s sides or one’s knees together for more stability.
Flexion: Movement of the muscles around a joint to pull a body part toward its front or center; bending.
Floortime: Stanley I. Greenspan’s method that fosters children’s healthy emotional development through intensive, one-on-one interactions with adults on the child’s level.
Fluctuating responsivity: A combination of overresponsivity and underresponsivity as the child’s brain rapidly shifts back and forth.
Force (see Grading of movement).
Four Fs: Robert Ornstein’s way to remember the reflexive, instinctive functions of the limbic system—feeding, fighting, fleeing, and sexual reproduction.
Four Levels: Dr. Ayres’ concept of the smooth, sequential development of sensory integration, from infancy through elementary school age.
Fragile X Syndrome: A set of symptoms, including mental retardation, facial anomalies, and deficits in communicative, behavioral, social, and motor skills; caused by an abnormality of the X chromosome.
Grading of movement (force): The ability to flex and extend muscles according to how much pressure is necessary to exert; a function of proprioception.
Gravitational insecurity: Extreme fear and anxiety that one will fall when one’s head position changes or when moving through space, resulting from poor vestibular and proprioceptive processing.
Gravity receptors: Organs in the inner ear that respond to changes in gravitational pull.
Gross motor: Referring to movement of large muscles in the arms, legs, and trunk.
Gustatory sense: The sense of perceiving flavor; taste.
Habituation: The neurological process of tuning out familiar sensations.
Hand preference: Right- or lefthandedness, which becomes established as lateralization develops in the brain.
Hidden senses: Internal senses.
Hippocampus: The brain part that compares old and new sensory stimuli and is involved with memory.
Hyperactivity: Excessive mobility, motor function, or activity, such as fingertapping, jumping from one’s seat, or constantly moving some part of the body; “fidgetiness.”
Hypersensitivity, Hyperreactivity, Overresponsiveness (see Overresponsivity).
Hyposensitivity, Hyporeactivity, Hyporesponsiveness (see Underresponsivity).
Hypothalamus: The brain structure that regulates unconscious bodily processes such as body temperature and metabolic functions.
IDEA: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, P.L. 99–457, and amendments. This legislation requires school districts to provide occupational therapy as a related service to children who need it in order to benefit from education.
Ideation: The process of forming or conceiving of an action to take; the first step in Praxis.
IEP: Individualized Education Program, a legal document specifying the needs of a child identified as having a disability and providing for special education and related services.
Impulse control: Difficulty in restraining one’s actions, words, or emotions.
Increased tolerance for movement: Underresponsivity to typical amounts of movement stimulation; often characterized by craving for intense movement experiences such as rocking and spinning.
Inhibition: The neurological process that checks one’s overreaction to sensations.
Inner drive: Every person’s self-motivation to participate actively in experiences that promote sensory processing.
Inner ear: The organ that receives sensations of the pull of gravity and of changes in balance and head position.
Integration: The combination of many parts into a unified, harmonious whole.
“Internal eyes”: Body awareness.
Internal senses: The subconscious senses that regulate bodily functions, such as heart rate, hunger, and arousal, including the interoceptive, vestibular, and proprioceptive senses. Also called the hidden, special, near, or somatosensory senses.
Interoception: The body-centered sense involving both the conscious awareness and the unconscious regulation of bodily processes of the heart, liver, stomach, and other internal organs.
Intersensory integration: The convergence of sensations of touch, body position, movement, sight, sound, and smell.
Intolerance to movement: The overreactivity to moving or being moved rapidly, often characterized by extreme distress when spinning or by avoidance of movement through space.
Kinesthesia: The conscious awareness of joint position and body movement in space, such as knowing where to place one’s feet when climbing stairs, without visual cues.
Language: The organized use of words and phrases to interpret what one hears or reads and to communicate one’s thoughts and feelings.
Lateralization: The process of establishing preference of one side of the brain for directing skilled motor function on the opposite side of the body, while the opposite body side is used for stabilization; necessary for hand preference and crossing the midline.
Learned helplessness: The tendency to depend on others for guidance and decisions, to lack self-help skills, and to be a passive learner; often related to poor self-esteem.
Learning disability: An identified difficulty with reading, writing, spelling, computing, and communicating. (SPD may cause significant learning problems that are often neither recognized nor identified as learning disabilities.)
Light touch (see Touch pressure).
Limbic system: The brain part that processes messages from all the senses and is involved primarily with emotions and inner drive; the “seat of emotions”; the “smell brain.”
Linear movement: A motion in which one moves in a line, from front to back, side to side, or up and down.
Low tone (see Muscle tone).
Meltdown: The process, usually caused by excessive sensory stimulation, of becoming “undone” or “unglued,” accompanied by screaming, writhing, and deep sobbing.
Mental retardation: Significantly subaverage intellectual functioning and impairments in adaptive behavior; caused by injury, disease, or abnormality before age eighteen.
Midline: A median line dividin
g the two halves of the body. (See Crossing the midline.)
Modulation: The brain’s ability to regulate and organize the degree, intensity, and nature of the person’s response to sensory input in a graded and adaptive manner.
Motor control: The ability to regulate and monitor the motions of one’s muscles for coordinated movement.
Motor coordination: The ability of several muscles or muscle groups to work together harmoniously to perform movements.
Motor cortex: The portion of the cerebrum that sends out messages to direct the movement and coordination of muscles; also motor strip.
Motor learning: The process of mastering simple movement skills essential for developing more complex movement skills.
Motor planning: The ability to organize and sequence the steps of an unfamiliar and complex body movement in a coordinated manner; a piece of praxis.
Muscle tone: The degree of tension normally present when one’s muscles are relaxed, or in a resting state; a function of the vestibular system, enabling the person to maintain body position. Low tone is the lack of supportive muscle tone, usually with increased mobility at the joints; the person with low tone seems “loose and floppy.”
Myelination: The gradual insulation of a neural axon with a fatty substance called myelin.
Neurology: The science of the nerves and the nervous system. A neurologist is a physician who diagnoses and treats diseases of the brain and central nervous system, but usually not SPD.
Neuromuscular: Relating to the relationship of nerves and muscles.
Neuron: The nerve cell, which is the functional and structural unit of the nervous system and the fundamental building block of the brain. Sensory neurons receive messages from receptors in the eyes, ears, skin, muscles, joints, and organs; and motor neurons send out messages to the body for appropriate responses.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): An anxiety disorder marked by recurrent, persistent, inappropriate thoughts and by repetitive behaviors such as hand washing.
Occupational therapy (OT): The use of activity to maximize the independence and the maintenance of health of an individual who is limited by a physical injury or illness, cognitive impairment, psychosocial dysfunction, mental illness, developmental or learning disability, or adverse environmental condition. OT encompasses evaluation, assessment, treatment, and consultation. An occupational therapist (also OT) is a health professional trained in the biological, physical, medical, and behavioral sciences, including neurology, anatomy, development, kinesiology, orthopedics, psychiatry, and psychology.
Ocular-motor (see Eye-motor skills).
Olfactory sense: The far sense that perceives odor; smell.
Optometrist or Developmental optometrist: A specialist who examines eyes, prescribes lenses, and provides vision therapy to prevent or eliminate visual problems and enhance a person’s visual performance.
Oral apraxia: A sensory-based motor problem affecting the ability to produce and sequence sounds necessary for speech.
Oral defensiveness: Overresponsivity in the mouth to certain food textures or tastes.
Oral-motor skills: Movements of muscles in the mouth, lips, tongue, and jaw, including sucking, biting, crunching, chewing, and licking.
Oscillation: Up-and-down or to-and-fro linear movement, such as swinging, bouncing, and jumping.
Overreactivity and Underreactivity: Exaggerated neurological and physiological processes that we cannot observe and that may cause over- and underresponsive behavior.
Overresponsivity: Observable behavior involving a quick or intense response to sensory stimuli that others usually perceive as benign; characterized by exaggerated, negative, and emotional responses (fight-or-flight) or withdrawal (flight or freeze).
Passive movement: The act of being moved by something or someone.
Passive touch: The act of being touched by something or someone without initiating it.
Perception: The meaning that the brain gives to sensory input.
Peripheral nervous system (PNS): One of the three components of the nervous system. Through the spinal cord, peripheral nerves in one’s skin, eyes, ears, muscles, and organs send sensory impulses to the brain and receive motor impulses from the brain.
Pervasive Developmental Disorder: Severe, overall impairment in the ability to regulate sensory experiences, affecting the child’s affect and behavior, interaction with others, and communication skills; similar to, but milder than, autism.
Physical therapy: A health profession devoted to improving one’s physical abilities through activities that strengthen muscular control and motor coordination, especially of the large muscles.
Plasticity: The ability of the brain to change or to be changed as a result of activity, especially as one responds to sensations.
Postural background adjustments: Automatic movements in one’s trunk and limbs, allowing a person to use only the muscles necessary for a particular motion.
Postural Disorder: Difficulty with moving or stabilizing the body to meet the demands of the environment or a particular motor task.
Postural stability: The feeling of security and self-confidence when moving in space, based on one’s body awareness. SPD may cause postural insecurity, the feeling that one’s body is not stable.
Praxis: The ability to interact successfully with the physical environment; to ideate, plan, organize, and carry out a sequence of unfamiliar actions; and to do what one needs and wants to do. Praxis (Greek for “doing, action, practice”) is a broad term denoting voluntary and coordinated action. Motor planning is often used as a synonym.
Prefrontal cortex: The cortical lobe in the brain that coordinates speech, reasoning, remembering, problem solving, self-control, and planning ahead.
Proprioception/Proprioceptive sense (the position sense): The unconscious awareness of sensations coming from one’s muscles and joints that provides information about when and how muscles contract or stretch; when and how joints bend, extend, or are pulled; and where each part of the body is and how it is moving.
Protective extension: Thrusting out an arm or leg to protect oneself while falling.
Protective system (see Defensive system).
Psychotherapy: Treatment by psychological means of mental, emotional, or behavior problems.
Receptive language: The ability to understand how words express ideas and feelings; language that one takes in by listening and reading.
Receptors: Special cells, located throughout one’s body, which receive specific sensory messages and send them for processing to the CNS.
Reflex: An automatic, innate response to sensory stimulation.
Regulatory disorder: A problem with adapting to changing conditions, such as self-calming when distressed; falling asleep and waking up; eating, digesting, and eliminating; paying attention; participating socially; and processing sensations.
Reptilian brain: In evolutionary terms, the oldest part of the brain, controlling reflexive, instinctive behavior; the “primitive brain.”
Reticular core: A network of neurons in the brain stem that receives impulses from every sensory system and is the center for arousal and for calming down.
Rotary movement: Turning or spinning in circles.
Satiety: Fullness.
Screening: A quick, informal procedure for the early identification of children’s health or developmental problems.
Selective mutism: A childhood anxiety disorder characterized by the inability to speak and communicate comfortably in select social settings.
Self-help skills: Competence in taking care of one’s personal needs, such as bathing, dressing, eating, grooming, and studying.
Self-regulation: The ability to control one’s activity level and state of alertness, as well as one’s emotional, mental, or physical responses to sensations; self-organization.
Self-therapy: Active, voluntary participation in experiences that promote self-regulation, such as spinning in circles to stimulate one’s vestibular system.
Sensitization: The process of interpreting stimuli as important, unfamiliar, or harmful, even if the stimuli are unimportant, familiar, and benign.
Sensory-Based Motor Disorder: A problem with movement, such as Postural Disorder and Dyspraxia, resulting from inefficient sensory processing.
Sensory cortex: The portion of the cerebrum that receives sensations from the body; also sensory strip.
Sensory craving: The constant quest for excessive sensory stimulation.
Sensory defensiveness: The tendency to respond to certain harmless sensations as if they were dangerous or painful; also overresponsivity.
Sensory diet: The multisensory experiences that one normally seeks on a daily basis to satisfy one’s sensory appetite; a planned and scheduled activity program that an occupational therapist develops to help a person become more self-regulated.
Sensory Discrimination Disorder: Problems in discerning the characteristics of sensory stimuli and the differences among and between stimuli.
Sensory integration (SI): The part of sensory processing whereby sensations from one or more sensory systems connect in the brain. SI dysfunction is another term for SPD.
Sensory integration theory: A concept based on neurology, research, and behavior that explains the brain-behavior relationship.
Sensory integration treatment: A technique of occupational therapy, which provides playful, meaningful activities that enhance an individual’s sensory intake and lead to more adaptive functioning in daily life. The emphasis is on improving sensory-motor processing rather than on skill training.
Sensory Modulation Disorder: The inability to regulate and organize the degree, intensity, and nature of responses to sensory input in a graded and adaptive manner.
Sensory-motor: Pertaining to the brain-behavior process of taking in sensory messages and reacting with a physical response.
Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD): Difficulty in the way the brain takes in, organizes and uses sensory information, causing a person to have problems interacting effectively in the everyday environment. Sensory stimulation may cause difficulty in one’s movement, emotions, attention, relationships, or adaptive responses.
“Sensory processing machine”: Dr. A. Jean Ayres’s term for the brain.
The Out-of-Sync Child Page 30