Sensory processing disorder (SPD)

Sensory processing disorder (SPD) is a blanket term referring to a range of neurological disorders in which the brain is unable to properly process incoming sensory data, resulting in abnormal or inappropriate responses. Although SPD was first described in detail in the 1970s by psychologist Anna Jean Ayres, who at the time called it "sensory integration dysfunction," it has only in the twenty-first century started to be accepted as a disorder in its own right rather than a symptom of other conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism, and the legitimacy of SPD as a diagnosis is still debated by the wider medical community. While this lack of recognition has made funding for research into SPD difficult to obtain, researchers have discovered evidence of a neurological basis for the disorder, which is believed to affect between 5 and 16 percent of all school-aged children. (Dewey, 2020)