An analysis of the American Occupational Therapy Association's narrative on sensory integration

New day.  New information.  Same narrative.The January 20, 2014 OT Practice publication has a brief article under the 'Industry News' section on page 2.  The article is entitled Study Finds SI Improves Function in Children With Autism and it links to the recent Schaaf, et al (2013) article that I posted about two months ago.What has happened in the last two months?  Well, there was a lot of social media conversation about that article.  On December 4th Diana Henry posted a link to the article on the OT Connections site and entitled her message thread "OT/SI: Finally recognized for treating autism!"  Some very beginning conversation occurred, which was very encouraging, but there is not nearly enough interest in discussing the way that we herald these studies when they are released.  My post in this thread encapsulates some concerns about designs that are reliant only on parent report:When the results of complex studies get reduced to soundbites I think that bad things can happen.  An example of this is the Ben-Sasson et al. (2009) study that reported that 16% of 7 to 11 year old children had symptoms of SPD-SOR.  This statistic is widely repeated, but what is not widely repeated are the investigators' other statements in that article including "Nonetheless there are limitations to relying on parent report, as parents may employ varying thresholds for rating similar behaviors due to differences in memory and emotional biases....
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: evidence-based practice sensory integration Source Type: blogs