2.2.4. Relationship between Autistic Behaviour & the Sensory Environment

2.2.4. Relationship between Autistic Behaviour & the Sensory Environment

Autistic individuals are either highly sensitive or under-responsive to sensory stimuli of sound, light, touch and so on. As discussed earlier, our senses play a vital role in shaping our experiences and perceptions of the world around us. It also influences our processes of thinking, reasoning, how we view space around us and how we make sense of new information and experiences. This is a major reason as to why an autistic child has a hard time out in mainstream society, as he/she is unable to decode and navigate through physical and social environments as others. This becomes more complicated by the fact that every autistic child faces different symptoms to varying degrees. Two major things must be kept in mind while designing spaces for children on the spectrum; an acute attention to detail as well as a heightened awareness of sensory experiences, as it only takes the smallest of details to render the training process ineffective. (Altenmüller-Lewis, 2017).

2.3. Creation of Secure Social Learning Environments for Children on the Spectrum

While trying to ensure accessible and comfortable environments, it also becomes important to ensure secure social environments, protecting autistic children from any form of stigma or discrimination, and providing them with the platform to engage safely and comfortably in social environments. This, in turn, will aid greatly in mental stimulation and overall social development, and encourage children to explore their thoughts/emotions, build friendships and improve behaviour and mental health (Gehl, 1987). Such environments can be cultivated by focussing on aspects of design such as connectivity, circulation, interactivity and so on.

2.3.1. Types of Design Approaches

When it comes to the design of learning environments for children on the spectrum, there exist two schools of thought; two approaches – the sensory-sensitive approach and the neuro-typical approach. The sensory-sensitive approach seeks to ensure the careful curation of the learning environment to make sure that nothing distracts the child, to ensure maximum learning and skill development, while the neuro – typical approach believes that it is important to replicate real life situations to acclimate the child, to positively ensure that he/she in the future will be able to integrate into mainstream society (Altenmüller-Lewis, 2017).

2.3.2. Design Considerations for Learning Environments

1. Safety – Children on the spectrum do not have a very good awareness of danger due to the altered perceptions of the environment around them. Since they have the tendency to get overwhelmed and run away, it is preferable to plan layouts and design/organize spaces which offer freedom to the child, while at the same time has minimised hazards, security risks, and behavioural triggers (Altenmüller-Lewis, 2017).

2. Involvement in Community – It is important to have children on the spectrum go out into society, now and then, may it be to offer community linked services, or to promote student interaction with mainstream society. It will help in building the child’s social and cognitive skills (Mostafa, 2014)

3. Zoning and Compartmentalisation – It is important to clearly organise spaces with respect to one other to cause the least opportunities for dysfunction, and for easy navigation throughout the complex. Spaces serving different purposes must be kept visually and spatially separate and distinct in order to avoid any

confusion. They can be assigned distinct sensory qualities that will greatly help a child move through the space with complete independence and no difficulty. This would also bolster the learning process and environment (Whitehurst, 2012).

4. Spatial Sequencing – Children with ASD have an affinity towards routine and predictability. Therefore, it is preferable to clearly organise spaces so as to avoid confusion. Spaces may be arranged in an order based on the daily timeline of activities to take place in the respective spaces. It is also advisable to group spaces with similar activity types next to each other. For example, music, arts and crafts rooms are “high stimulus” requiring high level of alertness while general classrooms and speech therapy rooms come under “high focus” requiring higher concentration. Staff rooms, toilets, admin areas, kitchen should be placed separate from the student areas, while buffer areas such as gardens, free-play space and other open spaces can be used as transition spaces from one activity zone to the next (Mostafa, 2008, 2014).

Figure 6 : Clear Organisation of spaces at REED Academy in Oakland, New Jersey (Source: WXY, 2011)

5. Thresholds – Care must be taken to ensure that thresholds between spaces are not too abrupt; instead, they should be fluid but still clear. Clarity is essential so as to prepare the child for the new space they would be entering; this is especially important in case the child is moving from a “high-stimulus” activity zone to a “low-stimulus” activity zone. Clarity can be achieved in many ways; altering ceiling or floor levels, varying floor or wall materials or by arranging furniture so as to create a separation between the spaces (Mostafa, 2014).

6. Way-finding, Navigation & Circulation – This a combination of the points 2) and 3); i.e. organise the spaces in such a way that it becomes easy to navigate

through and not cause any confusion. Limitations of Design can be solved by the effective use of transition spaces and avoidance of clear cut ‘corridors’; circulation spaces must be planned instead, each potentially offering a different kind of experience, so as to give the students a feeling of freedom and independence (Whitehurst, 2012).

7. Provision for Escape spaces – These need not be concrete rooms in the design but instead can take up corner or partitioned areas. The goal of these is to provide respite to the children in the form of distraction-free leisure areas to be used in the case of over-stimulation. They also need to be flexible in terms of what they can offer; some students may want to be calmed down and hence may require a relatively neutral breakout space, while others may crave a light stimulation via specific sensory experiences (Altenmüller-Lewis, 2017).

Figure 7 : Children at Social Sensory Architecture Pavilion, University of Michigan (Source: Ahlquist and Lienhard, 2016)

8. Control over sensory stimuli – A strict control must be kept on certain aspects of the environment such as acoustics, lighting, use of colour, heating, ventilation, scents and so on (Altenmüller-Lewis, 2017).