What is it
The tactile system, or touch, is our oldest and more primitive expressive channel. It is our “first language” as it is our main way of interacting and communicating with the world until we develop enough language, motor skills, and cognition to use other ways of interaction.
We receive tactile input through receptors cells that are located all over our body, from our head to our feet, on the layers of our skin. Some parts of our body have more receptors than others, like hands, feet, and mouth.
The different parts of the layers are responsible to identify different stimuli, such as:
- pain
- temperature
- hair displacement
- touch and deformation of the skin
- pressure and vibration
- skin stretch and joint movement.
Because these receptors are present in our whole body, it is hard to “avoid” sensation. For example, if a light is too bright or a place is too noisy, a person can cover their eyes or ears. This is very difficult when it comes to tactile sensation.
Functional impacts
This huge sensory system and all the lifelong tactile experiences will support the development of important skills, such as body awareness, motor planning, visual discrimination, language, academic learning, emotional regulation, and social interactions.
There are two very important functions in the tactile system to help with our learning experiences. The protective and the discriminative functions.
- Protective function:
The main goal of this system is to protect us from harmful stimuli. The receptors in our skin will capture an external input and determine, with our nervous system, if that stimulus could be a harmful or a pleasurable one.
For instance, when a fly land on the skin of our arm, our receptors quickly identify the stimuli as “strange” and potentially harmful stimuli. Therefore, our nervous system gets us to put our hands on the exact sport we felt the fly to get rid of the harm.
Usually, the more we experience the world and its sensations, the better and more used we get to the different feelings. During these experiences, our nervous system learns which tactile input to inhibit, tolerate, enjoy, or respond to.
- Hyper and Hypo sensitivity:
When a child is hyperreactive to the tactile input, they can present an increased response to touch and in a negative way. In these situations, the child will very likely refuse or present “fight or fly” responses to touch.
When a child is hyporesponsive to touch, they can either search for more input than usual by jumping, chewing, and touching all surfaces and fabrics. In some situations, they might present as the opposite, by being less attentive as they are receiving less input from the environment.
- Discrimination
This system is responsible for identifying what sensation we are feeling. All of our tactile experiences help us to create a memory of that feeling, improving our knowledge about the World. Some examples of tactile discrimination are identifying textures, shapes, force, and movement.
Once we create these memories in our brain, our body combines different sensory systems to help us to use objects and tools for a purpose, such as using play dough to create a shape.
The tactile discrimination combined with the proprioceptive and vestibular systems will become the Somatosensory system, informing us about our body in the space, and allowing us to move effectively around and purposefully perform an activity (praxis). For example, children with dyspraxia can present with difficulties in their somatosensory system.
In other words, poor tactile integration or discrimination can impact performance in different activities and relationships, as we rely on our tactile receptors in most of our occupational roles. Follow below some functional activities related to touch:
- Using tools with hands, such as cutlery, pencil, and scissors.
- Interacting with others without being afraid of being touched.
- Riding a bike and/or poor playground skills.
- Planning and executing novel movements and activities.
- Participating in multi-sensory activities in their daily life: showering, having their hair cut, brushing teeth, etc.
- Avoiding textures, including food with similar textures.
- Unaware of temperature and pain.
Treatments available
The sensory integration approach is vastly known to support children with tactile defensiveness or poor tactile discrimination.
What we know so far: it is very important to understand what are the child’s difficulties and challenges. If the child presents with tactile defensiveness, it is important to respect the child’s aversive symptoms and avoid using stimuli that trigger negative responses.
On the other hand, using positive experiences combined with tactile input accepted by the child is a great way to start their treatment.
If the child presents with poor tactile discrimination, the therapist can use motor-based activities to improve the child’s body awareness and planning skills (bottom-up approaches) or targeted activities to improve the child’s performance (top-down approaches).
If you have any concern about your child’s sensory processing and how it is impacting their daily activities, please reach out to us at hello@occupationaltherapy.com.au or call us on 9913 3823.
