intermediate poster                                                                 Introduction

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly known as autism is a group of mental conditions of brain development disorders (Autism Speaks, 2016).
• Sensory processing disorder (SPD) a condition in which the brain has troubles receiving and responding to information that comes in through the senses (About SPD, 2016 ).
• When someone is affected by this disorder they are only affected in one of the senses such as smell, touch etc (About SPD, 2016)
• A study done in the field investigated perceptual and neural responses to affective tactile textures stimulation in adults with autism (Cascio, et al. 2012).
• One recent study done investigated effectiveness of an aquatic playgroup on the playfulness of children between the ages 2-3 with autism disorder (Fabrizi, 2015).

Thesis:

Its predicted that textured playing cards help children with sensory processing disorder improve their sensory processing skills.

                                                              Methods

Subjects

• Participants parents were motivated to let their children be part of the study by being told that the study will add more research to the field and help develop different ways to help their children overcome their sensory issues.
• Participants were recruited from different daycare in long island.

Apparatus

• Participants will play a card game and the cards have different textures.
• Participants will be exposed to different textures such as soft, hard and rough textures.

Procedures

• Children meet up once a wee one hour and for a total of six weeks.
• Boys were divided into groups of threes there were a total of twelve boys.
• Only two groups were to play the game the other two groups had to sit aside.
• When the boys arrived to their section of playing card they were asked to choose from the cards which ones they liked.
• Played game with their group members and had to tell the name of the animal on the card and how they felt about the textured.
• Game went for two hours
• At the end the children were asked again to choose from the cards which one they liked.

                                                                   RESULTS

• Based on the results the groups that played the game for the six weeks improved more than the two groups that were not playing the game.
• The average of group 1 was 1.16, group 2- 2.83, group 3- 1.57 and group 4- 2.57. the group with the highest average of improvement was group 2 which was the group with autism and sensory processing disorder.
• Data was collected weekly
• The results collected were the amount of cards the children would say the like.

                                                                   DISCUSSION

• Textured card game can be a helpful technique to help the children in this population improve their skills.
• Textured card game offers a different form of therapy like environment.
• This study advances the field by adding additional research .
• Potential problems with the study is that it wasn’t well administered since the people leading the study aren’t experienced.
• One of the studies done in the field was done with adults that had autism instead of children. The adults were given three types of textures and they were to rate the textures by roughness or pleasantness (Cascio, et al. 2012).
• Another study previously done investigated effectiveness of an aquatic playgroup on the playfulness of children between the ages 2-3 with autism disorder (Fabrizi, 2015). Two different test were used the test of playfulness and test of environmental supportiveness were used to measure playfulness, caregiver’s promotion of play, and adequacy of the sensory environment

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                                                            REFERENCES

Bibliography

Autism Speaks. (2016). what is autism. Retrieved may 1st, 2016 from Autism speaks: https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism

Cascio, C. J., Moana-Filho, E. J., Guest, S., Nebel, M. B., Weisner, J., Baranek, G. T., & Essiick, G. K. (2012, March 23). Perceptual and Neural Response to Affective Tactile Texture Stimulation in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In NCBI. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3517930/

 About SPD. (2016). In Spdstar.org. Retrieved December 6, 2016.

  Fabrizi, S. E. (2015, December 11). Splashing Our Way to Playfulness! An Aquatic Playgroup for Young Children With Autism, A Repeated Measures Design. Retrieved from journal of occupational therapy

Through the textured card game children with sensory processing disorder improved their sensory skills. as the project comes to an end i have learned about new ways to help children with disability in a more engaging way as simple as playing a game. also i have learned more about the sensory processing disorder itself so i gained some knowledge on a field i wasn’t very familiar with. based on the results acquired from the study the textured card game was helpful with improvements for the children playing the c card game. my thesis was supported by the results obtained.

Discussion

Based on the results the children that played the card game for six weeks had more improvements with dealing with textures they previously disliked.This experiment doesn’t solve a major problem but it adds on to the research being made for the sensory processing disorder also it can serve as a therapeutic interventions for the children in the SPD population. This study makes advances to the field by adding to the research that is really needed in the area of SPD and ASD since ASD and SPD are disorders very closely associated. Potential problems with the study is that it wasn’t well administered since I am not experienced. Other issues were that the children had sensory processing disorder but not all had a texture issue and that wasn’t specified when recruiting the members. This study can help develop other therapeutic interventions for the population of SDP and ASD. Future experiments include using the textured playing card but with different ideas like dividing different textures into groups instead of presenting the textures in a random form to the subjects.

sensory project graph sensory-project-graph

Textured Card Game.The data was collected by the improvements the children have made each week for a total of 6 weeks. The fist time the kids were exposed to different types of textures they weren’t to pleased and some even avoided it but after several trials of the game the children (some) didn’t have any issue when being exposed to the textures.The conditions being compared in this experiment were children with sensory processing disorder (SPD) and children with autism (ASD) and SPD. The subjects in each group were asked to determine the texture of the animal in the card and then name the animal thats on the card. The subjects were asked to play with their group friends and tell each other the animal and texture and how they felt about it, if they liked the texture or not.

P.S was having an issue with naming the axis on the graphs didn’t find how to. The X axis thats where the total numbers of cards the children said they liked by the end of the week. on the Y axis is each week from week 1 which was when it started to week 6 the ending. As shown in the graph there has been improvements in some groups but not very drastic but improvements have been made of how many textured cards they are able to tolerate. The groups with the highest means were the ones that were playing the card game.

-Mean

Group 1-    1.16

Group 2-    2.83

Group 3-    1.57

Group 4-     2.57

no new changes was made to the week 13 worksheet. I believe at this point everything is going good so far with the game and its at a stable stage. I haven’t made any drastic changes to the worksheets due to the subjects being children and i want to keep it as simple as possible nothing complex because it would just get things out of hands.  But if i had a different age grouped subjects i would be making changes to make it more complex.

No drastic changes were made in the game design but small changes were made in two areas of the game design. Changes were made in the number of subjects that were used. The number of children used decreased because I previously had a total number of 40 children due to a misunderstanding of the project. The other change that was made was the technique used to collect data. I previously planned on using FMRI images to collect data from the subjects and now it has been changed. To collect data the children will be asked to choose from the pile of cards every week after playing the texture card game in order to see the improvements made by each child.

Textured card game. This game design of card game is affecting the sensory process. This game is designed for children within the ages 5-10 that have sensory processing disorder and some have both sensory processing disorder and autism. The game can be played with as many players but in order to avoid conflict between the boys i decided to only put 3 players in each group. The objective of the game is to expose the children to textures so they can get used to it and won’t have any issues with different textures because its something that is used in their everyday life and can affect them.

No new changes or revisions that apply to the worksheet was made. Although i do have some changes in other areas. I decided to use less children 40 was way too many, so i brought it down to 12 boys which is more easier. Also i changed a way of acquiring data which i previously mentioned i will be using FMRI  something that is actually impossible, so ill be using something similar to a survey in multiple choice form and also i will be asking  the kids to choose from the pile all the ones they like the textures.

one of the textured cards with the image of a bunny and cotton balls used to represent the softness of the bunny

The amount of subjects used was 12 subjects in total. All of the children were recruited from an occupational therapy office. The inclusion criteria consisted of children that were previously diagnosed with sensory processing disorder and also children diagnosed with autism in some cases the children might have had both.The data was collected by the improvements the children have made. The fist time the kids were exposed to the different textures they might have not like it or maybe even avoided it after several trials of the game the children some of them didn’t have any issue with the textures. Conditions created to be compared were children with sensory processing disorder (SPD) and children with autism (ASD) and SPD. Subjects in each group were asked to identify  the texture of the animal in the card and the name of the animal. The subjects were asked to play with their class mates and tell each other the animal and texture and how they felt about it, if they liked the texture or not. The outcome of the experiment turned out to be positive. The children that only had sensory processing disorder improved their sensory skills. Exposure to the textures played a huge part for the children improvements.

The name of the game is textured card game. The learning objective of the game is to expose children with sensory processing disorder to different textures. the cognitive process involved is sensory process. The numbers of players in the game is up to 4 players, they are divided into small groups.  the players take turns in the game and they each name the animal thats being presented on the card and how the feel about the card in regards to the texture.The purpose of teaching/ exposing the children to textures is so they can get used to it and wont have issues with it because is something that is used in their everyday life and they may be affected if they are unable to cop with different textures. There are no actual rules in the game because the game is being played by kids and the main point of the game is to learn by the idea of exposure. During the game the kids are exposed to textured and the learning of different textures are acquired. Engagement promotes learning of the different textures to the children. Some of the players in the game have different reactions to textures therefore the textures used on the cards all small pieces like a small piece of faux fur. The ending of the game consist of the children counting how many cards the players has in their hands. When the player no longer has cards left in their hands the game ends. Challenges presented to the player includes the player having issues with certain textures that they dislike. The game takes place in a farm nice quiet place. All the players interact and talk to one another in order to play the game.