Sensory Integration and Self Regulation in Infants and Toddlers: Helping Very Young Children Interact With Their Environment

Every child has a unique pattern of taking in and responding to information from the senses. Most young children learn to build on their own individual capacities and accept help from others as they learn to cope with their environment. But some children need help in overcoming difficulties in responding to information from their senses in order to achieve the levels of self-regulation they need to interact with and explore the world around them. This book is written for a multidisciplinary audience of practitioners who support the development of infants and young children in a broad array of settings—including child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, early intervention, neonatal intensive care follow-up, developmental clinics, infant mental health centers, and child life programs. The authors integrate and synthesize knowledge from the fields of occupational therapy, neuroscience, child development, psychology, psychiatry, education, and the movement sciences to help readers:
*Understand the sensory development of infants and young children,
*Learn about assessment and intervention approaches designed to promote very young children’s self-regulation and adaptive behavior, and
*Become aware of new directions and outstanding questions in basic and applied research in the field.

G. Gordon Williamson, PhD, OTR, is the Director of Project BEAM at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey, and he is Associate Clinical Professor in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

Marie E. Anazlone, ScD, OTR, FAOTA, is Assistant Professor of Clinical and Occupational Therapy at Columbia University.