Writing Homework Help

Part I: Start thinking about your review of literature paper

It’s time to start thinking about your future paper. By now I hope that some topics have sparked some interest. There are so many other topics, so be sure to look at our book, and future topic titles in Modules. Breaking the task down into several steps will make this process manageable and dare I say, enjoyable! Your task for this week is to pick a topic and retrieve at least one article to get you started. This may not be your final topic and it may not be a paper that you use, but it will be a good exercise.

1. What is a broad topic that you are interested in exploring? (has to be a topic on something about autism in child development)
2. How can this broad topic be narrowed down? What specifically are you interested in writing/researching?
3. Why did you pick this topic? What are you excited to learn from it? Explain briefly.
4. Find one article that will introduce you to this topic. It can be a literature review or an empirical article, or a report. Do not cite a book or a chapter or Wikipedia. Cite the article and give a brief summary of what the article is about (brief).

Part II: Self-Stimulatory Behavior (Part I)
Self-stimulatory behavior or “stimming” may occur because people with ASD are over- or under-sensitive to the world around them. Stimming can help reduce sensory overload. There are many reasons that people engage in these stereotypic behaviors. Although these behaviors may look odd, they are often comforting, calming, reduce fear or anxiety, and can even increase arousal for those who are under-responsive to stimuli.

If the behavior is disruptive or unsafe (e.g., the person is self-injurious) there are ways to help including identifying the trigger, redirecting verbally or physically, teaching appropriate skills, providing positive reinforcement, or using extinction techniques.

1. What behaviors do you engage in when you feel scared, bored, excited? Do you tap a pen on your desk, twirl a lock of hair, or whistle? Look around the people in your life (family, friends, co-workers) to identify some stimming behaviors in other people. What do you see?
2. Look at the examples in this table: SENSORY PROCESSING ACTIVITY TABLES 1 and 2 MASTER.docx Download SENSORY PROCESSING ACTIVITY TABLES 1 and 2 MASTER.docx to understand how they correspond to the different senses/systems. Generate your own examples and type them up as text in this post.

Part III: Sensory Strategies
Patricia Wilbarger (MEd, OTR) coined the term a “sensory diet”. A sensory diet is a carefully designed, personalized activity plan that provides the sensory input a child needs to be focused, attentive, and organized throughout their day. Each child is unique and has his/her own sensory needs. Many children need to engage in stabilizing, focusing activities so they can improve their learning. Children, of all ages and all degrees of sensory processing issues can make strides from a tailored, individualized plan.

Calming activities and input will benefit those children who have an overly stimulated profile. Alerting activities will benefit those children who have an under stimulated profile. While a trained OT must make the evaluation and create the plan, it is up to others in the child’s life to also be on board with what the OT is doing in therapy sessions. You will take a stab at creating activities (content created is for this class and not to be used with clients, family, etc.).

1. Come up with and describe briefly sensory activities for each of the 7 systems. You must create activities for two age groups for each system (i.e., you will have 14 activities total): 1) children 2-5 years, and 2) children of elementary school age. Be sure to state whether you are creating calming (slow, rhythmic to slow down the engine) or alerting (i.e., alerting lethargic children) activities (your choice). Be specific about the activity’s intensity, duration, and equipment/material needed. For example, how long are they safe crashing for and into what objects?

1) Tactile system
2) Auditory system
3) Visual system
4) Smell/Olfactory system
5) Taste system
6) Vestibular system (sense of movement)
7) Proprioception system (body awareness)

Part IV: Sensory Issues Research

We know know that Dr. Temple Grandin is a famous scholar who also happens to have ASD. Read her piece here: https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/treatments-needed-for-severe-sensory-sensitivity/ (Links to an external site.)

1. What research variable (related to sensory issues/sensitivities) would you add, to further explore this area of research? Think about what might make for a compelling research question https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/research_overview/index.html (Links to an external site.) or hypothesis (a reasonable expectation based on factual information).