Reasons to pause when discussing a "sensory processing disorder" construct.

The Sensory Profile is an assessment tool that purports to measure sensory processing abilities (Pearson Education Inc., 2008); there are versions for infant/toddlers, school aged children, and adolescent/adult populations.  The tool has been used to document the incidence of a "sensory processing disorder" construct (Ahn, et. al., 2004; Ben-Sasson, et. al., 2009).  To date, although many scientists recognize that children can have difficulties with processing sensory information, this diagnostic construct has been rejected and is not considered as a distinct clinical entity (AAP, 2012).   For more in depth reading, please reference previous blog posts here. I was interested to see an article in a recent OT Practice magazine regarding sensory processing abilities of children involved in the justice system (Shea and Wu, 2013).  The article presents an interesting test case for use of the Sensory Profile to help understand the nature of some difficulties that these adolescents may have.Face validity is a construct that relates to whether or not an assessment measures what it is supposed to measure.  The question we can ask about this study is: Does the Sensory Profile measure what it is supposed to measure?  A statement in the article that caught my attention wasThe occupational therapists were particularly surprised by the low score in sensation seeking, because they had hypothesized that these youths would have higher sensation-seeking tendencies...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: OT practice sensory integration Source Type: blogs