Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile®

Your Scientifically-Based Choice

The Sensory Profile family of products includes the best-selling Sensory Profile, Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile, Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, and the new Sensory Profile School Companion. The expansive age-range of Sensory Profile products allows you to confidently evaluate sensory-related difficulties in clients, from birth to geriatric.

Whatever the age of your clients — infants, child, adolescent, or adult — Sensory Profile products can help you:

• Understand the complexities of their sensory processing
• Gather critical sensory information related to home, school, and work
• Design strategies for managing daily life

Build evidence in your practice

These unique instruments offer a research-based, family-centered approach to sensory processing and provide case studies and guide you in interpretation and intervention planning. For more information about how these assessments work together click here.

For further information about the administration, scoring, or interpretation, please click on the appropriate link below:

• Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile
• Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile
• Sensory Profile
• Sensory Profile School Companion

Help Clients Understand and Improve Their Own Sensory Experiences

The Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile is designed as a trait measure of sensory processing patterns and effects on functional performance. An individual answers questions regarding how he or she generally responds to sensations, as opposed to how he or she responds at any given time. This enables the instrument to capture the more stable and enduring sensory processing preferences of an individual.

A clinician can also evaluate the possible contributions of sensory processing to the client's daily performance patterns and identify and develop client awareness and strategies to optimize the desired sensory environment.

Other Uses for Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile

• Discover How a Parent’s Sensory Ability Can Impact a Child with Sensory Difficulties
• Evaluate parents of a child or infant with sensory processing challenges with Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile.
• By profiling the parents for their sensory processing responses, you will gain valuable insights into the child’s interactions and help to build more family-centered intervention strategies.

See the benefits of having a parent of a child with sensory processing difficulties take the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, by reading this real-world example, case study.

• Enables clients to evaluate themselves through the use of a Self-Questionnaire.
• Evaluate the possible contributions of sensory processing to the client's daily performance patterns.
• Obtain information about everyday sensory experiences and the impact on behavior in different settings.
• Use for identifying and developing client awareness and strategies to optimize the desired sensory environment.
• Generates an individualized profile of sensory processing across four quadrants: low registration, sensation seeking, sensory sensitivity, and sensation avoiding.
• Reproducible charts provide an intervention matrix across the quadrants and six sensory processing categories
  • taste/smell processing
  • movement processing
  • visual processing
  • touch processing
  • activity level
  • auditory processing
• Useful in a variety of settings, school systems, mental health, vocational programs, rehab clinics, wellness centers, community based programs, and long term care facilities.
• Applicable for adolescents and adults with or without disability related issues.
• A theory-based instrument to measure sensory processing; promotes theory based decision making and intervention planning.
• Non-intrusive, easy to administer and score.

Structure

There are 60 items on the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, with 15 items for each quadrant. These quadrants cover the sensory processing categories of Taste/Smell, Movement, Visual, Touch, Activity Level, and Auditory; these categories are distributed throughout the quadrants.

Winnie Dunn is professor and chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy Education at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She is author of the Sensory Profile and the Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile and coauthor of the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile. Dr. Dunn is a Fellow of AOTA and a member of the American Occupational Therapy Foundation’s Academy of Research. She has earned the AOTA’s Award of Merit and has received AOTA’s Service Award several times. She has also received the A. Jean Ayres Research Award.

In 2001, Dr. Dunn was appointed the Eleanor Clarke Slagle lecturer, the top academic honor in occupational therapy. Her lecture, entitled The sensations of everyday life: Empirical, theoretical, and pragmatic considerations, included reflections on the meaning of her work on all the Sensory Profile measures. It is published in American Journal of Occupational Therapy, (November/December 2001, 55 (6)).

She earned a BS in Occupational Therapy and an MS in Education/Learning Disabilities at the University of Missouri at Columbia. She earned a doctorate in Special Studies: Applied Neuroscience at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. Additionally, Dr. Dunn has published extensively, authoring or coauthoring more than 100 journal articles, monographs, books, book chapters, and book reviews. She also has served on the editorial boards of Physical and Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics, Cognitive Rehabilitation, Occupational Therapy Journal of Research and Infants and Young Children. She has presented hundreds of papers and workshops during her career.

Catana E. Brown is an associate professor in the Occupational Therapy Department at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Lawrence. She has been teaching occupation therapy at the university level for the past 12 years—three years at Towson State University in Maryland and nine years at the University of Kansas. In 2001, Dr. Brown became a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). Additionally, she serves as chair of the AOTA Mental Health Special Interest Section, as well as of the research division of the Kansas Occupational Therapy Association(KOTA). Her honors include an Outstanding Practice Award in 1990 by the Maryland Occupational Therapy Association (MOTA), a Dissertation Award by AOTA in 1998, and a Joyce Jones Teaching Award by the University of Kansas in 1999. Dr. Brown earned a B.A. and an M.A. in occupational therapy from Colorado State University and New York University, respectively. She earned a Ph.D. in Psychology and Research in Education, with an emphasis in measurement, statistics, and research; and a minor in clinical psychology from the University of Kansas. Additionally, Dr. Brown has performed extensive research in schizophrenia as it relates to activities of daily living, and has authored or co-authored at least 20 articles in professional journals. As well, she has presented at many conferences and symposiums throughout the United States, Canada, and England.

Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistant

Software that meets your needs for all Sensory Profile products!

Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistant supports the Sensory Profile (including expanded and quadrant cut scores), Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile , Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile and the new Sensory Profile School Companion.

• Save time with automatic scoring, interpreting, reporting and store your results.
• Administer the profile from a desktop computer.
• Receive a free annual subscription for any of the Sensory Profile products.
• Purchase software access to any of the Sensory Profile products or additional software subscriptions to other Sensory Profile products, based on your individual needs.

Desktop version for new software purchases.

If you already own Sensory Profile for Windows, you can purchase the enhanced software at a discounted price that includes quadrant and expanded scores for the Sensory Profile and receive a free annual subscription for the Sensory Profile.

Scoring and Interpretation :

The quadrant scores derived from the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile represent patterns of sensory processing as described in Dunn's (1997a) Model of Sensory Processing. Based on the intersection of two continua (neurological threshold and behavioral response/self-regulation), this model describes quadrants identified as Low Registration, Sensation Seeking, Sensory Sensitivity, and Sensation Avoiding. Each quadrant has its own score; it is possible for an individual to have any combination of scores. Some patterns that seem to be mutually exclusive (e.g., sensation seeking and sensation avoiding) may be present in the same individual.

Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistant

Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistant supports the Sensory Profile (including expanded and quadrant cut scores), Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile , Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile and the new Sensory Profile School Companion.

• Save time with automatic scoring, interpreting, reporting and store your results.
• Administer the profile from a desktop computer.
• Receive a free annual subscription for any of the Sensory Profile products.
• Purchase software access to any of the Sensory Profile products or additional software subscriptions to other Sensory Profile

Desktop version for new software purchases.

If you already own Sensory Profile for Windows, you can purchase the enhanced software at a discounted price that includes quadrant and expanded scores for the Sensory Profile and receive a free annual subscription for the Sensory Profile.

Sensory Profile Adolescent-Adult Sample Report (PDF - 103 KB)

For your convenience, below is a list of commonly asked questions regarding the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile products.

1. I recently purchased the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile and noticed that there were no section scores; how can I determine what sensory systems contribute most to the individual's performance differences?

Answer: Pattern Grids provide information on the sensory systems (e.g., visual, auditory, movement). By examining the item scores and how they are clustered, you can get a more detailed picture of an individual's sensory processing preferences.

2. When should I use the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile?

Answer: You should use the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile when you suspect that sensory processing issues may be impacting functional performance in everyday activities (e.g., self-care, family relationships, bonding, job satisfaction/performance, school performance).

3. Is it appropriate to administer the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile on individuals with severe disabilities?

Answer: Yes; if you administer the test to someone who has difficulty completing a self-report, you may adapt the administration procedures to allow a caregiver to answer the questions. You may even offer the respondent significant assistance offering extensive clarification or repeated examples, probing repeatedly to elicit answers to facilitate his or her completion of the instrument. However, if you adapt the administration procedures, you may not use the classification system based on comparative results using standardized procedures. You may, however, use your clinical judgment to assist in your understanding of the individual's sensory processing patterns and design intervention strategies that incorporate your understanding.

4. Why would an older adult need to be evaluated regarding sensory processing?

Answer: You may wish to look at the impact sensory processing has on their daily life. The completion of the Self-Questionnaire results in an increased awareness and understanding of an individual's sensory processing preferences, not only for that individual but also for the professional who administers the measure, team members, family members, and others who are close to the individual. The information gained from the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile will enable you to conduct more informed intervention planning, taking into consideration the individual's particular preferences.

Technical Characteristics

Gain an understanding of the developmental aspects including sampling structure, validity, and reliability by reviewing the Technical Report (PDF - 319 KB).

Examining Sensory Quadrants in Autism (PDF - 141 KB)
More information (PDF - 814 KB)

Case Study (PDF - 159 KB)