Many autistic children are very vulnerable to sensory overload. They may become overloaded in situations that would not bother other people. They may become overloaded in situations that would have been taken in more than they can keep up with.

The causes of information of overload can be:

• the inability to filter out irrelevant or excessive information 
• delayed processing 
• if the person works in mono but is forced to attend to the information from several channels
• hypersensitivity 
• distorted or fragmented perception resulting in hypersensitivity, anxiety, confusion, frustration and stress that, in turn, may lead to challenging behaviour.

  The sensory information overload can lead to several routes they can (or are forced) to take and may result in:

• Systems shutdowns and/or withdrawal that can give them a break and let them to ‘recover’. The process from hypersensitivity to systems shutdowns may be fast (i.e., sensory discomfort may be short lasting or not experienced at all) or may be slow (i.e., sensory discomfort may be prolonged).
• Sensory agnosia 
• ‘Challenging’ behaviours 

The information overload may be dispersed before it leads to systems shutdowns or it may not. In the first case, a person may experience severe sensory hypersensitivity (colours becoming too intense, light becoming too bright, certain pitches becoming intolerable, certain patterns becoming obtrusively distinct, touch may feel ‘prickly’ or ‘ticklish’, or provoke ‘shock’) yet continue to process information (Williams 1996). For example:

Together, the sharp sounds and the bright lights were more than enough to overload my senses. My head would feel tight, my stomach would churn, and my pulse would run my heart ragged until I found a safety zone (Willey 2014).

The causes of information overload on auditory level are reported not to do with the perception of pitch and volume but rather with the number of simultaneous sound sources, the duration of these stimuli and the rate of the bombardment relative to process capacity. Then hearing becomes acute, sounds that are normally inaudible can be as audible as usual sounds, the perception of these additional sounds can make them intensely unbearable. Donna Williams considers this reverberation of sound as one of the biggest contributors to sound information overload. The visual equivalent of sound reverberation, according to Donna Williams, is light refraction (or ‘shine’) that can cause a visual effect of shooting out streams or ‘sparks’ of light and ‘visually cutting up’ people and objects. The same can happen with touch: when too much of visual and auditory information has been taken in, the sense of touch can be oversensitive, ‘sharp as a pin’, and to be touched can be ‘shocking’ (Williams 1996).

The threshold for processing sensory stimuli varies among autistic persons, at different ages and in different environments.

Each individual may cope with overwhelming stimuli in different ways: mono-processing, avoidance of direct perception, withdrawal, stereotypies. Some even ask us not to (sensorily) pollute the environment. Do we listen? For instance, at one of the autistic provisions, a teaching support assistant is happily whistling and singing. Joe, an 11-year-old autistic boy, is rocking back and forth. He covers his ears with his hands, but it does not seem to work and he pushes his index fingers inside his ears. No effect. Then he pleads with his ‘helper’: ‘Laura, stop singing, please. Stop it!’ The reaction of the support worker? ‘Why should I? Don’t be stupid, Joe.’ If we look at the same situation from Joe’s perspective, we could interpret it as a sensory assault of the child. For this boy the ‘singing’ (whether it was the pitch of the voice or the sounds of whistling he could not tolerate) physically hurt his ears, as if the helper threw stones or litter at him. So why should she stop?

The sensory environment is very important for autistic people. They lack the ability to adjust to sensory assaults other people accept as normal. If we accommodate it and try to ‘keep it clean’ in order to meet their very special needs, the world could become more comfortable for them. With sensory needs met, problem behaviour becomes less of an issue. If there were no risk of being attacked, you would not need defence. To make the world safer for autistic individuals the price would not be too high – ‘just stop singing’ when they ask you to. And if they cannot ask because of their communication problems, use your knowledge and imagination to find out what they need.

A child vulnerable to sensory overload needs to be in control of his environment. Learning to recognize early signs of coming sensory overload is very important. It is better to prevent it than to ‘deal with the consequences’. A child may need a quiet place (the ‘isle of safety’) to recover, where he can go to ‘recharge his batteries’ from time to time.

Teach the child how to recognize the internal signs of the overload and how to use strategies (for example, relaxation) to prevent the problem. A ‘First Aid Kit’ (for sensory overload) should always be at hand. Possible contents might be sunglasses, earplugs, squeezy toys, favourite toys, ‘I need help’ card.

References

Willey, L.H. (2014) Pretending to Be Normal. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Williams, D. (1996) Autism: An Inside-Out Approach. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Written by Olga Bogdashina on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services