Sensory Communication

Available again: a landmark collection on sensation and perception that remains influential.

This photocopiable resource provides the reader with a step-by-step approach to organising sensory-focused activities for carers and professionals working with people with physical, multiple or complex disabilities. Importantly, it also presents information on sensory stimulation within a framework that embraces the person's daily environment.

Drawing on their extensive experience in developing and implementing effective treatment programs in homes, schools, and clinics, Nancy Kashman (OT) and Janet Mora (SLP) provide practical advice and workable strategies to help children and adults with sensory and communication disorders. Combining aspects of occupational and speech-language therapies, Nancy and Janet demonstrate how an integrated team approach increases therapeutic effectiveness while maximizing the benefits of treatment resources. This revised edition offers even more techniques that can enhance a person's ability to attend, function, and learn. Detailed, illustrated appendices show and explain creative activities and include sample handouts. Supported by numerous references and case studies, the authors tackle topics such as: Understanding Sensory Integration and Communication Sensory Processing Difficulties Sensory-Based Behaviors A Therapeutic Approach to Intervention The Benefits of Teaming Assessment of Communication Skills and Sensory Motor Skills Assessment of the Environment Environmental Strategies and Supports Treatment Strategies for Children Strategies for the Adult & Older Child Transitions & Informational Tools Oral & Feeding Interventions Developing Communication Skills Using Videos And more!

Animals rely on sensory input from their environment for survival and reproduction. Depending on the importance of a signal for a given species, accuracy of sensory coding might vary from pure detection up to precise coding of intensity, quality and temporal features of the signal. Highly sophisticated sense organs and related central nervous sensory pathways can be of utmost importance for animals in a complex environment and when using advanced communication systems. In sensory systems different anatomical and physiological features have evolved to optimally encode behaviourally relevant signals at the level of sense organs and central processing. The wide range of organizational complexity, in combination with their relatively simple and accessible nervous systems, makes invertebrates excellent models to study general sensory coding principles. The contributions to this e-book illustrate on one hand particular features of specific sensory systems, and on the other hand indicate not only common features of sensory coding across invertebrate phyla, but also similar processing principles of complex stimuli between different sensory modalities. The chapters show that the extraction of behaviourally relevant signals from all environmental stimuli, as well as the detection of low intensity signals and the analysis of temporal features can be similar across sensory modalities, including olfaction, vision, mechanoreception, and heat perception.

This uniquely valuable book arose from the author's work with profoundly disabled children in a special needs school. The sensory impairment of the children meant that they were unable to learn from traditional teaching methods as they were unaware of the world around them. Our very first awareness of our surroundings and ourselves come through our senses of smell, touch, taste, sight, hearing and movement, and without them we are isolated. To benefit from the normal school curriculum, children with sensory impairment must learn to develop each of their senses, individually and in combination - a process the non-handicapped child goes through spontaneously and unconsciously. This book outlines a curriculum for each of the senses in turn, using stimuli that can be varied to suit the age of the child or young person. Demonstrating how these can be combined to create a multisensory experience and how this newly developed awareness can be integrated into the rest of the school curriculum. This book was developed from the author's work with profoundly disabled children, their sensory impairment meant that traditional teaching was unsuccessful as they were unaware of the world around them. Flo Longhorn sets out a curriculum for developing each sense, both individually and in combination, using stimuli that can be varied according to the age of the child. This book shows how these techniques can be amalgamated to create multisensory experiences and how this new awareness can be integrated into the rest of the school curriculum.Designed for teachers, and parents, of children with profound multiple disabilities combined with sensory and physical impairment this has become a classic work.

Contributions to Sensory Physiology, Volume 6 covers theories and research about the physiological basis of sensation. The book starts by describing cutaneous communication, including topics about the mechanoreceptive systems in the skin, the temporal relations of the stimuli, and pattern generation and its recognition by the skin. The book then discusses the effects of environments, such as transneuronal degeneration and stimulus deprivation, on the development in the sensory systems. The across-fiber pattern theory and the electrophysiological analysis of the echolocation system of bats are also considered. The book further tackles coding in the auditory cortex and the psychophysics and physiology of the lateralization of transient stimuli. Anatomists and psychophysicists will find the book invaluable.

The Sensory Modes of Animal Rhetorics: A Hoot in the Light presents the latest research in animal perception and cognition in the context of rhetorical theory. Alex C. Parrish explores the science of animal signaling that shows human and nonhuman animals share similar rhetorical strategies—such as communicating to manipulate or persuade—which suggests the vast impact sensory modalities have on communication in nature. The book demonstrates new ways of seeing humans and how we have separated ourselves from, and subjectified, the animal rhetor. This type of cross-species study allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing a deeper and more inclusive history of rhetoric than ever before.