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A Critique of the Application of Sensory Integration Therapy to Children with Learning DisabilitiesTheodore P. Hoehn received his PhD in experimental/cognitive psychology from Vanderbilt University in 1988. He is currently a research associate there in the Department of Psychology and Human Development. His research interests include verbal processing and memory representation, as well as age- and intelligence-related differences in basic cognitive and perceptual processes.Address: Theodore P. Hoehn, Department of Psychology and Human Development, Box 154, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203.
Alfred A. Baumeister received his PhD in physiological psychology from Peabody College in 1961. He is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. His primary interests relate to the prevention and treatment of children's behavioral and health disorders. Sensory integration (SI) therapy is a controversial—though popular—treatment for the remediation of motor and academic problems. It has been applied primarily to children with learning disabilities, under the assumption that such children (or at least a subgroup of them) have problems in sensory integration to which some or all of their learning difficulties can be ascribed. The present article critically examines the related issues of whether children with learning disabilities differentially exhibit concomitant problems in sensory integration, and whether such children are helped in any way by means specific to SI therapy. An overview of theoretical contentions and empirical findings pertaining to the first issue is presented, followed by a detailed review of recent studies in the SI therapy research literature, in an effort to resolve the second issue. Results of this critique raise serious doubts as to the validity or utility of SI therapy as an appropriate, indicated treatment for the clinical population in question—and, by extension, for any other groups diagnosed as having "sensory integrative dysfunction." It is concluded that the current fund of research findings may well be sufficient to declare SI therapy not merely an unproven, but a demonstrably ineffective, primary or adjunctive remedial treatment for learning disabilities and other disorders.
Journal of Learning Disabilities, Vol. 27, No. 6,
338-350 (1994) This article has been cited by other articles:
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