The sensory characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder: Teachers' observation

Abstract

The study aimed to identify the sensory characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as estimated by their teachers. Descriptive surveying approach was used to suit the nature of the study. The researchers selected a simple random sample consisting of (40) teachers from (6) centres for autistic children in Amman, Jordan. The tool used in this study was a checklist consisted of 38 items. The collected data were analysed and then expressed through means and standard deviations. In addition, ttest was used to determine significance of the differences. The results revealed that the sensory characteristics of children with ASD were often evident in the study sample. The characteristics of children with ASD in the sensory domain were ranked as follows: First; tactile stimuli, second; olfactory and tasting stimulants, third; visual stimuli, and finally the auditory stimuli. The results showed that there were no statistically significant differences in the study sample attributed to age except the tactile stimuli and the differences were in the favour of age (3-6). Implications and recommendations are presented.