Last week a current and very reflective trainee on our Intensive Interaction modular training course emailed me with a question:
The question: I was just wondering if you had any information around the different senses involved in intensive interaction (do they have names when one sense is more dominant and favoured etc)?
My (at the time I think unsatisfactory) answer:
Actually I have nothing specific in terms of written out information on 'the different senses involved in intensive interaction', but there are obvious sensory issues to be taken account of in how we look to use Intensive Interaction with someone who might have particular sensory needs or presentations (although I would say that all people have sensory needs that are personal to them) i.e. sometimes it can be more visual (e.g. when we physically mirror some aspect of someone’s behaviour), sometimes more via sounds (e.g. when we echo back the sounds they make or make verbal/vocal commentaries on some aspect of their behaviour) and sometimes it can be physical or tactile e.g. via rhythmical touch to the person or via shared movements together without touching which could include rocking together or running and twirling together.
Sometimes some practitioners talk about meeting the service user’s ‘sensory needs’, which can be done via the sensory integration work of specially trained OTs or physios (which I don’t pretend to fully understand - like most things!), but when done within Intensive Interaction engagements we are really looking from improved social and psychological and/or emotional outcomes (e.g. improved connection, better interactive rapport and relationship building) by working through a service user’s sensory preferences (again that is something we all have).
Now I currently feel that I have short changed my trainee in trying to answer this question in a fairly concise fashion (within the time constraints I had that morning), and rather than setting out to trawl through all the Intensive Interaction literature to find something someone else has said that would concisely and more satisfactorily answer this both straight forward and/or quite difficult question (the source of which I am currently unaware), I thought I would put it out for all our II community to mull over and hopefully join a usefully reflective debate.
Now obviously Intensive Interaction does rely on the sociable use of a person's senses, all of them to some degree (probably) and more so via certain preferred or more acutely socially attuned senses; but within Intensive Interaction it is done with the person, not to them, and it is not done to meet any apparently identified sensory need - it is done to make a psychological not a sensory connection (although obviously again the two will in some way overlap and quite possibly be mutually interdependent, and hopefully mutually supportive).
So, understanding a person's sensory preferences as demonstrated within a social interaction (as opposed to how they present in a individualistic or neurological sensory assessment type way) can surely be of some help to all people trying to engage with someone with a communicative or social impairment - but then I find myself asking another question:
Could an attempt to consciously and proactively differentiate sensory preferences within an Intensive Interaction engagement deflect the practitioner from responding in an intuitive and attuned way, 'in the moment', to the person as a integrated social actor, if they are trying to frame their responsiveness to fit with any apparently identified sensory needs first?
Hmmm, a really good question, and yes, perhaps more difficult than straight forward to try to answer. Anyone else want a go?
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