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Autistic Sensory and Movement Differences: Strengths, Access, and Support

$30.00

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Understanding autistic sensory processing and movement differences is essential for professionals providing autism support in clinical and educational settings.

Learn how autistic sensory processing and movement differences shape perception, communication, and daily participation in this research-grounded autism professional development course for therapists and educators.

This two-hour training, presented by Therapist Neurodiversity Collective and Dr. Steven Kapp (University of Portsmouth), focuses on practical, neurodiversity-affirming approaches to supporting autistic people across the lifespan.

Autistic sensory processing and motor differences are foundational features of autism. They influence how autistic people experience sound, movement, language, and interaction. These differences are frequently misunderstood in clinical and educational settings, including being misinterpreted as “regression.” Gain a clear, evidence-based framework for understanding sensory processing in autism and its direct impact on communication, including speech divergence.

Participants will

Identify Sensory and Movement Differences as Foundational to Autism
Deepen understanding of autistic sensory processing and motor differences as core features of autism, recognizing how these differences shape perception, interaction, and participation across environments and across the lifespan.

Examine Misinterpretations of Sensory-Motor Differences
Expand professionals’ ability to identify and challenge common misunderstandings, including interpretations of sensory and movement differences as “regression,” by grounding analysis in current research on autistic development and experience.

Analyze Perceptual and Motor Strengths and Challenges
Develop a nuanced understanding of autistic perceptual and motor profiles, including how strengths and differences interact and how these patterns influence communication, learning, and daily functioning.

Understand the Relationship Between Sensory-Motor Differences and Communication
Explore how sensory and movement differences may contribute to speech divergence and communication differences, emphasizing communication as a dynamic, relational process shaped by multiple interacting factors.

Apply Neurodiversity Paradigm Centered Support Strategies
Equip participants with practical, ethically grounded approaches to support sensory needs and accommodate movement differences, building from strengths to increase access, participation, and autonomy in clinical and educational settings.

 

► Featuring: Dr. Steven Kapp, 

► Enrollees have on-demand access to this course for 180 days from enrollment.

► 2 hours of Professional Development credit

► Audience: This course is designed for therapists, educators, and related professionals seeking continuing education in autism that is research-grounded, neurodiversity-affirming, and directly applicable to clinical and educational practice.

✨ Included:
☑ Handouts
☑ Certificate of Attendance for 2 hours of professional development

🔓🔓🔓 Therapy Neurodiversity Collective Members, this short course is included in your membership.

A bold, colorful Instagram slide features a surprised-looking baby with wide eyes and hands on their cheeks, positioned on the right side of the image. The left side contains large, gradient text in pink, orange, and yellow that reads: “What if ‘autistic regression’ isn’t regression at all?” Below, in black text: “New theory (Kapp, 2025) challenges this idea—and offers a powerful reframing.”
“Motor & Sensory differences are foundational” “Sensory–motor differences emerge at or before birth, before social-communication signs of autism, which challenges the idea of ‘autistic regression.’” These foundational differences shape how autistic people engage with their environment across the lifespan. Motor differences often require conscious attention and effort—impacting gestures, communication, and interaction. Sensory and movement differences are often misunderstood or underestimated by non-autistic people.
Autism is a lifelong neurodivergence. Kapp (2025) provides clinical, neurological, and experiential evidence that sensory and motor differences in autism are lifelong, though outward presentation may change significantly over time. This theory disputes the concept of “losing” an autism diagnosis, reframing it as camouflaging—when autistic people suppress traits to appear non-autistic, often at significant personal cost, and not necessarily beneficial to their well-being or long-term outcomes.
Underestimated Autistic Empathy. Empathy in autistic people is often misunderstood or minimized—by others and sometimes by autistic people themselves—even when testing or behavior shows strong empathic responses. Sensory hypersensitivities in autism overlap with traits like emotional intensity and stress vulnerability, yet empathy is still often under-recognized—even though sensory overstimulation is known to relate to empathy in non-autistic people.
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Sensory-sensitive Support Support for autistic people in and beyond interactions can include: slowing down body language providing color filters that help them read words and people interactive stimming imitating their movements taking a more responsive than directive approach when interacting Speech and eye contact should not necessarily be encouraged (p. 12).
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Autistic people’s brains seem to process repeatedly encountered sensory stimuli as relatively “new”—rather than top-down filtering based on past experience. Reduced sensory habituation occurs more in autistic than in other neurodivergent people. Autistic people may notice physical details others miss and show reduced susceptibility to visual illusions. Autistic people may rely more on current evidence when making decisions.
The theory calls into question behavior-based definitions that place “social dysfunction” within single people while ignoring underlying motor and sensory foundations. Future research must prioritize participatory approaches with diverse autistic people, including those with intellectual disabilities, and improve how sensory processing is understood and measured.
Context matters These findings primarily reflect Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Developmental “milestones” and social norms are culturally relative even for motor development. Kapp, S. K. (2025). Sensory–movement underpinnings of lifelong neurodivergence: Getting a grip on autism. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 19, Article 1489322. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2025.1489322

Dr Steven Kapp is an autistic academic at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. His research broadly considers the nature of autism and support for autistic people, as a concept, diagnosis, and identity; through participatory research with autistic people as community partners; and considering the perspectives of the autism community. He has recently published on autism as a lifelong neurodivergence based in sensory and movement differences, as well as on the strengths of autistic people with speech divergence.

 

Kapp, S. K. (2025). Sensory–movement underpinnings of lifelong neurodivergence: Getting a grip on autism. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 19, Article 1489322. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2025.1489322

Kapp, S. K., Gillespie-Lynch, K., Sherman, L. E., & Hutman, T. (2013). Deficit, difference, or both? Autism and neurodiversity. Developmental Psychology, 49(1), 59–71. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028353

Bottema-Beutel K, Kapp SK, Lester JN, Sasson NJ, Hand BN. Avoiding Ableist Language: Suggestions for Autism Researchers. Autism in Adulthood. 2021;3(1):18-29. doi:10.1089/aut.2020.0014

Kapp, S. K., Steward, R., Crane, L., Elliott, D., Elphick, C., Pellicano, E., & Russell, G. (2019). ‘People should be allowed to do what they like’: Autistic adults’ views and experiences of stimming. Autism, 23(7), 1782-1792. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1362361319829628

 

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