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Abstract
Jean Ayres invented Sensory Integration (SI) for children experiencing learning and social difficulties because, according to Ayres, they could not adequately integrate information from multiple sensory modalities. She established a scientific basis for her identification of children with sensory integrative difficulties, using statistical techniques to identify symptoms and neuroscience to determine a cause. She was an unusually reflective practitioner who catalyzed a community of practice around SI without becoming a guru—indeed, she encouraged her students to come up with their own ideas and test them empirically. She felt isolated from the growing field of Occupational Therapy (OT) yet is viewed as one of its greatest pioneers. After her death in 1988, the SI community gradually began to argue about fundamental issues like what should constitute an appropriate diagnosis and set of tests for SI. At present, the network is fragmented to the point where some of the opposing positions may be incommensurable with each other, which would require a trading zone.
Notes
1. A. Jean Ayres and the development of sensory integrative therapy, SES-0924534. All conclusions are mine and do not reflect the views of the NSF.
2. Collins uses the term ‘walking the talk’ to explain interactional expertise but he does not understand what this expression means. Walking your talk means acting in accordance with the beliefs you espouse, e.g. if you talk about the importance of solar power, you walk by installing solar panels on your house. ‘Talking the walk’ reflects my view of interactional expertise, which requires talking like someone who does SI therapy and research.
3. From notes provided by Jean’s younger sister, Nancy Erwin, in Ayres Archive.
4. December 7, 1945 letter from A. Jean Ayres to Margaret Rood, A. Jean Ayres Archive at USC http://www.usc.edu/libraries/finding_aids/records/finding_aid.php?fa=0317
5. Thanks to Lawrene Kovalenko for this piece of information.
6. Ayres identified muscle spindles, Golgi corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles and free nerve endings. A thorough account of her detailed, precise account of the state of the research as of Citation1955 is beyond the scope of this article, so main points are summarized here.
7. I am indebted to Lawrene Kovalenko for drawing my attention to this.
8. Proprioception is the information about the posture and movements of the body, transmitted through mechanoreceptors in joints and muscles (Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell Citation2013). For example, proprioception allows you to know whether your arm is bent or straight, and therefore put a shirt on, when your eyes are closed.
9. Ayres identified muscle spindles, Golgi corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles and free nerve endings. A thorough account of her detailed, precise account of the state of the research as of 1955 is beyond the scope of this article, so main points are summarized here.
10. Letter to Sieg, 6/29/81, cited in Sieg Citation1988, 97.
11. I have been unable to uncover any details about the process that led to Ayres getting the award--presumably the decision was confidential.
12. From A. Jean Ayres archive at USC.
13. Gorman interview with Florence Clark, 3/09/16.
14. Gorman was given supervised coaching on handwriting in elementary school, and failed every time because no one diagnosed why he wasn’t able to hold a pencil properly and execute the right motions. Ayres would have broken the handwriting task down into its required components and what parts of the nervous system controlled those, then worked to build these capabilities to the point where it was possible to attempt handwriting.
15. A. Jean Ayres archive at USC.
16. Kashani interview with Florence Clark, 1/13/16.
17. Letter from Ayres to Morse Manson, October 25, Citation1961; response from Manson, October 31st, 1961, from A. Jean Ayres archive at USC.
18. Letter from Ayres to Morse Manson, June 4, Citation1964, from A. Jean Ayres archive at USC.
19. She did this by using critical ratios, which involves determining the difference between the means for each group on each test, then putting the result over the standard error for that difference to determine which differences were significant.
20. Mary Jo Ellis and Ginny Scardina co-chairs of the 1964 OOTA conference, published a monograph of Jean’s talk, available from the A. Jean Ayres archive at USC.
21. The author failed handwriting in every elementary school class because no one diagnosed the tactile and motor difficulties that also prevented me from being able to do somersaults and other simple activities.
22. Supported by Children’s Bureau http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/ and the Wofen Family Foundation (LA?). USC helped with computation, and she used a statistician.
23. In her article, she listed the specific tests, of course.
24. The debate whether to renorm the SIPT or create a new test will be discussed in Part II of this article.
25. Louis Leakey followed a similar strategy by giving paid lectures to fund projects like Diane Fossey’s work with gorillas and Jane Goodall’s work with chimpanzees (Morell Citation1995).
26. The ongoing story of the efforts to create a new version of the SIPT will be covered in a separate paper, which will include more details on the network involved in improving the tests and the certification process.
27. Ayres refers to using ‘portions’ of the SCSIT and the Illinois test of psychologuistic abilities plus the Wide Range Achievement Test and the Slosson Oral Reading Test.
28. Matching done via ‘arbitrary regression scores’.
29. Ayres’ explanation of this analysis is so cursory that it makes it hard to evaluate.
30. The test includes reading words, comprehending sentences, spelling and solving math problems.
31. Slosson Oral Reading Test.
32. Clark, Forward to 25th Anniversary Edition of Sensory Integration and the Child (Ayres Citation2005).
33. Gorman interview with Florence Clark, March 3, 2009.
34. Ayres SI was a paradigm in the sense that there was a community of practice with specific training in test administration and therapy that distinguished its approach from others like behaviorism.
35. Clark remembered (in her 3/3/2009 interview) that the study was initially published with the three T-tests. It was then done with a different statistical analysis because they used three separate T-tests rather than an ANOVA. The ANOVA reduces the possibility of probability pyramiding. A MANOVA would reduce probability pyramiding even further by comparing the three conditions over all of the tests, then permitting a closer look at where the significant differences emerged.
36. More on this in Part II of this article.