Exploring Connections Between Interoception and the Sensory Profile
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There is no shortage of studies on sensory processing and the interplay between sensory preferences and sensory environments on an individual’s health, well-being, and ability to perform tasks, but the research often fails to reflect lived sensory experiences. The connection between interoception — the perceptions of bodily signals and states — needs to be included in a comprehensive look at a person’s sensory patterns.
Our perceptions of sensory processing often focus on external sensations such as sound, sight, smell, and touch, whereas interoceptive sensations such as hunger, thirst, or a racing heart are internal signals.
The links between interoception and participation in daily life have led to interoception increasingly being regarded as a critical component of clinical intervention. Catana Brown, Ph.D., OTR/L, professor emerita of occupational therapy at Midwestern University, and Winnie Dunn, Ph.D., OTR, distinguished professor at the University of Missouri, authors of the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (A/ASP), have developed a new tool, Sensory Profile Interoception (SPI), to identify how interoception manifests in everyday behaviors.
“As occupational therapists, our approach emphasizes both looking at the environment, including the environmental triggers that would create discomfort or challenges with participation, and what environmental supports we can provide that would help in those situations,” Brown explains.
The Sensory Processing Connection
A/ASP is a widely accepted measure for assessing sensory processing. The measure characterizes four sensory processing patterns: sensitivity, avoiding, registration, and seeking, [1] [MC2] based on Dunn’s Sensory Processing Framework. A/ASP considers input from seven senses — vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, movement (vestibular), and body position (proprioception) — and helps identify a person’s preferences for the amount and intensity of each type of input according to their response patterns. “The Sensory Profiles grew out of observations people were making in the actual practice of serving others in occupational therapy,” Dunn explains.
The SPI considers the relationship between interoception and sensory processing and adds to the information provided in A/ASP. Interoception influences much more than just physiological responses. It shapes how individuals experience internal sensations, emotions, and cognition, ultimately affecting participation in daily life.
The SPI uses Dunn’s Sensory Processing Framework to extend the A/ASP to include interoception and provides a conceptual structure for intervention planning, targeting interoception, that can improve participation.
Many tools that measure interoception lack the ability to identify everyday behaviors that reflect interoceptive impact. Assessing interoceptive impact is key for helping occupational therapists and other professionals understand interoceptive strengths and build interventions to overcome challenges. Research published in the Occupational Therapy Journal of Research found interventions targeting interoceptive awareness to be effective at improving health, well-being, and occupational participation.
The SPI is the first interoceptive measure with cut scores to allow comparisons between individuals and the larger population. The authors’ goal was to emphasize that we all inhabit the entire range of this set of behaviors with the understanding that assessing “interoceptive impact,” or the experience of how bodily sensations influence participation in daily life, could create a sense of empowerment and agency.
“It’s about everyday life,” Dunn says. “The Sensory Profiles are assessments, but because they’re structured around everyday behaviors, they have this automatic way of helping people to see what the intervention options might be.”
Brown says, “A lot of disciplines talk about sensitivity and avoiding — and maybe seeking — but very few talk about low registration, this idea of missing information, and I think that is where we can make a lot of contributions in terms of helping people.”
The SPI represents a new, evidence-based source of information about the ways interoception affects daily activities (interoceptive impact). Including interoception in a wider assessment of sensory processing is key for intervention planning at the participation level, making SPI especially useful when intervention goals focus on participation-oriented outcomes.
Enhance your professional tool kit with the Pearson Sensory Profile 2 and the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile assessments.