Differential Associations Between Sensory Response Patterns and Language, Social, and Communication Measures in Children With Autism or Other Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Purpose Examine patterns of sensory responsiveness (i.e., hyperresponsiveness, hyporesponsiveness, and sensory seeking) as factors that may account for variability in social-communicative symptoms of autism and variability in language, social, and communication skill development in children with autism or other developmental disabilities. Method Children with autistic disorder (AD; n = 72, mean age = 52.3 months) and other developmental disabilities (DD; n = 44, mean age = 48.1 months) participated in a protocol measuring sensory response patterns, social-communicative symptoms of autism, and language, social, and communication skills. Results Hyporesponsiveness was positively associated with social-communicative symptom severity, with no significant group difference in the association. Hyperresponsiveness was not significantly associated with social-communicative symptom severity. A group difference emerged for sensory seeking and social-communicative symptom severity, with a positive association for the AD group only. For the two groups of children combined, hyporesponsiveness was negatively associated with language skills and social adaptive skills. Sensory seeking also was negatively associated with language skills. These associations did not differ between the two groups. Conclusions Aberrant sensory processing may play an important role in the pathogenesis of autism and other developmental disabilities, as well as in the rate of acquisition of language, social, and communication skills.

Sensory processing in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Relationship with non-verbal IQ, autism severity and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder symptomatology

“…Thus, in the studies by Rogers et al (2003) and Wiggins et al (2009), no relationship was found between the sensory symptoms and the ADOS social/communicative score, while this relationship was found in the study by Watson et al (2011). In this study, the children were older than in the other studies and, in addition to scales and questionnaires, behavioral evaluation measures were used to measure sensory processing, unlike in the aforementioned studies (except the one by Boyd et al, 2010).…”

Genetic variation in serotonin transporter modulates tactile hyperresponsiveness in ASD

“…In addition, children with ASD in our study were generally high-functioning, which prohibits us from generalizing our findings to more impaired individuals. Altered patterns of sensory behavior are reported to be more prevalent in low-functioning cases of ASD (Patten, Ausderau, Watson, & Baranek, 2013; Watson et al, 2011), potentially further limiting our power. Furthermore, the SERT promoter polymorphisms are, at best, an indirect assessment of SERT expression and function, hindering our ability to directly test the effects of SERT on sensory functioning.…”

“…Studies of sensory function in ASD have primarily focused on broad patterns of sensory behavior, which have been categorized as hyper- and hyporesponsiveness. While several reports indicate that hyporesponsiveness to sensory stimuli is highly prevalent in children with ASD and correlates strongly with clinical features (Foss-Feig, Heacock, & Cascio, 2012), it remains unclear whether patterns of hyperresponsive sensory behaviors are a distinctive ASD characteristic (Baranek, David, Poe, Stone, & Watson, 2006; Ben-Sasson et al, 2009; Rogers & Ozonoff, 2005; Tavassoli, Hoekstra, & Baron-Cohen, 2014; Watson et al, 2011). To clarify these findings, recent investigations of sensory processing have also analyzed patterns of behavior across multiple sensory modalities (Kern et al, 2006; Little et al, 2011; O’Riordan & Passetti, 2006; Tomchek & Dunn, 2007; L.…”

Detail-oriented cognitive style and social communicative deficits, within and beyond the autism spectrum: Independent traits that grow into developmental interdependence

“…Indeed, the most thorough meta-analysis to date found that sensory modulation issues consistently distinguish ASC and TD individuals across studies (Ben-Sasson et al, 2009). Sensory issues are largely separable not only from cognitive inflexibility (as argued above), but also from executive functioning (Boyd et al, 2009;Chen et al, 2009), and social interaction deficits (Watson et al, 2011), the latter observable as early as infancy (Baranek, 1999). Moreover, although the affected modalities can vary greatly between ASC individuals (perhaps explaining some of the ambivalence towards including sensory issues as a core symptom) there is some evidence that, within ASC individuals, severity of sensory modulation abnormalities highly correlates across sensory modalities (Kern et al, 2007).…”