Sensory Development: Harnessing the Power of Non-Visual Senses for Everyday Living 

Welcome to OIB-TAC’s monthly webinars, where our presenters share valuable information and helpful resources to support professionals working with older adults who are blind or vision impaired. Let's check out this month's webinar. 

Jennifer Ottowitz: Hello, and welcome to our webinar today. we're excited to talk about sensory development, and I'm so pleased to introduce our presenter. He is the s- I'm gonna get it wrong, d- sensory development instructor? Paul, you're gonna correct me, but Paul Hastings- Yeah,

Paul Hastings: that's okay. You're close ...

Jennifer Ottowitz: Paul Hastings with the Carroll Center.

So straighten me out. What is your official title?

Paul Hastings: I am the sensory training, I'm the sensory arts instructor. I'm the sensory arts

Jennifer Ottowitz: instructor. There. There we go. So I was missing the- See, I

Paul Hastings: almost forgot. I forgot myself.

Jennifer Ottowitz: and we're so excited that you're here to talk about this subject, because so many times when people lose their vision, there's this, a, a misconception that our senses automatically become superhuman.

Yeah ... which of course they do not. And then also that it's just an automatic switch to start using your other senses. if you can't see, of course just use your hearing or your sense of touch, and it doesn't auto- always automatically happen. And you're gonna share with us today information to talk about the importance and the impact of training those other senses and helping people feel more comfortable using them and trusting them.

Yeah, And so I am- Beautiful ... yeah, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to you.

Paul Hastings: Okay. Great. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for, inviting me to speak today. this is a really exciting opportunity for me, because this subject is so near and dear to my heart, and you did a beautiful job of framing why this is important in our work, in working with folks who are visually impaired.

and I'll go into a little bit more detail about why that's but I'm just thrilled to be here, and I th- wanna thank everyone who's participating today, and joining us, for giving up a, a- an hour of a beautiful... I hope it's beautiful where you, are, but, a sum- a summer afternoon.

I, really appreciate that. I'm reporting here from beautiful Cape Cod, and it's a gorgeous day here, and I hope it's nice where you are as well. sensory development or sensory training, I'm gonna use these a little bit interchangeably. But, I wanna give you an overview of today's presentation first.

so I'm gonna cover first what is sensory development and what is sensory training. How is it applicable in the day-to-day lives of persons with low or no vision? What is its origin story? How did it come to be part of the rehabilitation program at the Carroll Center for the Blind? and I'm gonna tell you about my background in a minute, but that's where I work.

And then we're gonna talk about some exercises that we have done over the years at the Carroll Center in sensory development. And, after each of the exercises, I am gonna give folks an opportunity to ask questions and really also to share your experience in working with your students or your clients in sensory development exercises.

I would love to hear what you all are doing in this area. so the learning objectives for today's, session are the following. Number one, to identify the function and purpose of sensory development for people with low or no vision. Number two, identify three applications for the use of sensory development skills in daily living.

And three, identify three sensory development exercises to help gather and use non-visual information effectively. Okay? So those are the three kind of broad, objectives, for the session itself so let me tell you a little bit about myself. again, my name is Paul Hastings, and I am employed at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts.

I started in this field, in an art therapy classroom at a place called Boston Aid to the Blind, and that was way back in 1987, so I'm dating myself here. I didn't know anything about blindness. I had never met a blind person before. I majored in art in college, and this organization was looking for someone to work in the art therapy classroom, as a ceramics teacher.

And I jumped into the deep end of the pool and, loved, the job and, all these years later I'm still very much connected to that work through a kind of circuitous, route, which I'm gonna talk about. I was then, I then entered the UMass Boston program and I became a certified orientation and mobility specialist.

and after that, I joined the Carroll Center for the Blind, on their staff, and the Carroll Center is a residential rehabilitation program. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the history, but, we ... And historically we have served folks who are adventitiously blind, people who l- had vision and lost their vision.

That has changed very much over the years, but when I first started back in, in 1990, that was the bulk of our population. And, much of what I'm gonna talk about today comes from exercises and training that was developed specifically for that group of, folks. anyway, after working as a mobility instructor for a couple years at the Carroll Center, I went back and I got my master's degree in rehabilitation counseling at UMass, and I continued on at the Carroll Center as the case manager and counselor there.

and from there, I, left, vision rehabilitation for about 20 years, and I worked in higher education, as a student services professional. And one of my responsibilities was overseeing disability services. And I enjoyed that work very much. and then when COVID happened, like so many people, I decided I, I wanted a change.

and I went back to the Carroll Center to teach in a new program that they had developed, called Sensory Arts. And I was so thrilled to have this opportunity. and if my, our executive program director, Dina Rosenbaum, is listening, I wanna thank her publicly for bringing me back.

Sensory Arts is a class whereby students are learning to use their non-visual se- senses in project-based learning. So at the Carroll Center, people take classes in braille and computer technology and techniques of daily living, et cetera, et cetera. But the Sensory Arts class is a class where they are picking a project that, that they are gonna make themselves, either a woodworking project, a ceramics project, a sewing project.

And the, the objectives of that class is to teach people to rely on their non-visual haptic skills or hand skills, and to gather information and use that information while, working on a project. and there's a great sense of accomplishment and sense of pride as people are gathering those skills and using them effectively but also are making something, that hopefully they feel, very proud about.

I still do sensory training and sensory development. It's woven very much into my course. And I also work with our mobility, staff at the Carroll Center to integrate some of the teachings of the, of sensory training into, their work. okay, so I wanna just ask ... Before we go on, I would like to ask folks if you would, by showing a raise of hands on the computer, if you would let me know how many of you folks are VRTs, vision rehabilat- rehabilitation therapists.

Just a quick show of your hand. I'm just trying to get a sense of the makeup of the group

And, TJ, I'm gonna ask you to help out,

TJ Roberts: with this so far I'm sh- yep, so far I'm showing two raised, two raised hands.

Paul Hastings: Okay. All right. And how about how many folks are, orientation and mobility specialists?

TJ Roberts: One raised hand.

Paul Hastings: Okay. how many folks are teaching, skills, daily living skills, at, with folks in their homes?

TJ Roberts: A bunch are populating.

Paul Hastings: Okay.

TJ Roberts: Five current six

Paul Hastings: Okay All right.

TJ Roberts: 11.

Paul Hastings: Okay. All right. I just wanted to get a little of a, bit of a sense of, of this and what the, today's group is. Last question: How many folks meet with people in their homes as an itinerant service provider?

TJ Roberts: Seven, eight

Eight. Going once.

Paul Hastings: Okay. Going twice. Going once, going twice. That's good. Excellent. I appreciate that. All right. i- in your work, either, either as a, a direct, service provider, or maybe some of you are counselors or social work, there are lots of ways to integrate some of the things that I'm gonna be talking about today.

but what I wanna do before I jump into the exercises, I, want to share with you, how I begin or how we begin at the Carroll Center by introducing this notion of sensory development. Okay? and what we're doing is we're trying to integrate this idea right at the beginning of a person's program.

So as I said, I work at a center-based program, so people are coming to us from all over the place, to enroll in a rehabilitation program that could be anywhere from eight weeks to 20 weeks long, depending on their goals. so I, in the past, have done the orientation session, and that means I get to meet folks very early on in the process.

And what I would like you to do is just listen to, what I go through with our new students with an ear towards the things that I'm talking about. Because as we get into the presentation, you're gonna hear examples of these things, but I wanted you to hear how we do a soft approach, to sensory training and sensory development with new clients.

So I welcome the new clients into the seating area of our lobby of the main building at the Carroll Center. Okay? We call this the fishbowl because it's situated in an atrium which rises to a big skylight up on the third floor of our building, and our building is housed in a, in an old carriage house.

We have a lovely old, carriage house built at the turn of the century, which has all been retrofitted. Almost all of the classes and activities are taking place in this building. So I welcome the new students, and I acknowledge that this is, on this first day, that they probably feel very anxious, and they're probably feeling like this is gonna be a stressful experience.

I congratulate them on taking this f- step in coming to the Carroll Center. it's not easy for folks to leave their home and travel to a residential program. and it's, an enormous undertaking, and I, want to, as much as I can, put people's ease... put them at ease about what the experience is going to be like.

And I congratulate them on being open to learn many new ways of doing things, right? like your clients, many of our students have lost vision, over time, right? Many of them are folks who had vision, at, some point in their life and have lost vision. Although we do often-- we also welcome folks who have been blind, since birth.

I give a little history of the building just for kind of background. and then I explain that I'm gonna orient the group to the f- some parts of the first floor of our building. And I tell them, "That's what I'm here for this morning. I just am trying to give you a little bit of information about the first floor so you can start to be thinking about, s- information as you move about."

I ask the students to close their eyes and just listen to what I'm about to s- t- say to them, right? And t- and listen for the things that I'm gonna be drawing their attention to. Okay? So the first thing I ask them to do is to quietly sit in the seating area just for a few minutes, just simply listening I ask them, "What is it that you hear in the environment?

What is it that you notice about where we are and the space that you're in?" And many of the, the clients will answer, "Oh, I sense an openness," because they can hear noises above them. Or they might say, "I hear footsteps all around me," right? "On all sides," or, "I hear footsup- steps above me," right? They often say they hear doors opening and closing.

we have an elevator in the first floor. They can hear the, bell, the ding of the elevator bell. And I tell them that at first when you come to the Call Center, this... all of these sounds can be overwhelming, right? This... Especially if you've left your quiet home and come to the Call Center, which can be very busy, right?

So I assure them that these confusing so- sounds are actually gonna turn into helpful bits of information that are gonna make them feel not anxious and stressed, but the opposite. It's gonna make them feel that they belong in this space and that they can use this information, as they begin to get their bearings.

Okay, so then I describe, I describe the building for them and I say, "The main building is a big fat capital T and the seating area or the fishbowl is at the intersection of the stem of this T and the top crossbar, the top of the T." So I said, "Picture yourself i- in this map if you will. This, there's a big giant T.

You're at the intersection of the, stem of the T and the top bar." And then I walk the stem of the T and I c- walk the crossbar of the top of the T while talking loudly so they can hear what I'm, what I am presenting. They can hear and put sounds together with the shape of a T that they might have in their mind.

Okay? the crossbar I tell them at the top of the T runs east to west and, it's filled with smooth surfaces. The crossbar of the T is flat, shiny linoleum kind of material. The lobby in contrast is carpeted. So I said, "When you're in the lobby area near the fishbowl, you're gonna feel the carpet underneath your feet.

When you're in the, the top part of the, the, the T, the crossbar, you're gonna feel a smooth surface underneath your feet." And then I say to them that there are two exits on either end of the crossbar, the east door and the west door. Each of those exits has a vestibule with a nubbly, or bumpy rubber floor.

The east door takes you to the tech center, which is our computer training center, and the west door takes you to the dorm and to Center Street, which is our main, address. And Center Street's a busy street. So I let them take this all in, right? We're all being quiet. I'm speaking in this kind of a soft voice.

I tell them that when they exit the west door, they will almost always hear traffic because when you go out the west door of the Cowell Center, you're facing Center Street. It's probably 300 yards away, but you can always hear traffic. I-- And I said, "That's different from the east door. When you go out the east door, you hardly hear anything.

It's much quieter on the back part of the campus." And I said, "Think about the west door, that when day is done, you head out of the west door towards the setting sun and down towards your dormitory." And I remind them that the sun sets in the west, and when they go out on the west door at the end of the day, they're gonna be walking, if they imagine this, into the sunset.

Okay? This is a little device that will help them to really, make a distinction between the east and wet door- west doors. "Outside of the west door is a wooden footbridge," I tell them, right? And going over, it goes over something that's kinda like a ... I told you it was a carriage house. there was a fake moat around this carriage house, and the, the wooden bridge goes over this moat, and that's a very distinct feature.

I said, "If you go out the west door, you're gonna be on a little wooden bridge with wooden railings on either side." Very distinct, okay? And so I tell them, "As they are moving about in the next few days, think about those, those landmarks, if you will. On the way to the west door, you're gonna hear some, two important auditory landmarks."

And I explain to them an auditory landmark is just like a physical landmark, except that you're gonna be hearing it and maybe not feeling it. The elevator with its bell ringing is, on the way out, to the, towards the west door. The kitchen, the back door of the kitchen is on the way out towards the west door, and the, the kitchen door is always open, and you can hear the refrigerators and freezers running constantly.

you can practically hear those from anywhere in the first floor, in the lobby area. So I said, "As you're moving about and you're, thinking about how to exit to the dormitory, which is gonna be important, think about those landmarks. Think about the, surfaces that are underneath your feet," right?

"Think about the sounds that, that your feet make on different surfaces." And I said, "These things that all feel very strange to you right now are gonna become really helpful, landmarks, and, kind of guideposts, if you will." and at this point I might introduce the clock face analogy. how many folks here use the clock face analogy in their work with clients as an orientation tool?

I see Stephanie, Rafael. Okay, good. Amy. I don't know what you did, TJ, but this is great. I can see everybody's

TJ Roberts: Oh, they're using their emojis. This is awesome.

Paul Hastings: I love it. Thank you, everybody. Excellent. So for those of you who don't know, the clock face... Oh, lots of people. I don't wanna im- I don't want to talk down to anybody and assume that you don't, but I tell clients, "You're gonna imagine yourself standing on the face of a giant clock, which the, this face of the clock is beneath your feet.

You're in the center where the two hands would stem from. When you point directly in front of you, you would be pointing to 12 o'clock on the clock face. Behind you, behind you, straight behind you would be 6 o'clock, 3 o'clock would be off your right shoulder, 9 o'clock would be off to your, off your left shoulder."

Okay? And so on. Now, young people may not use clock face analogy anymore. and if they don't, I will usually incorporate other orientation, strategies. But I know from talking to Jennifer that a lot of you folks work with older folks. and I ask people i- you know, are they comfortable using the, face of a clock, as a tool to orient themselves.

but anyway, that's often a time that I do that. So anyway, after that, I end the session. I tell them that we, or remind them we've heard a lot of sounds today in the lobby, and I say that these sounds are gonna help them as they learn their way around. I've heard, remind them they've heard sounds of the elevator and the kitchen and the doors opening and closing.

I tell them that we've, or remind them that we've talked about, what you'll find beneath your feet as you start to move about. And then I say one word about this and one word only. I'll say to them, "What we talked about today is something that we call sensory awareness." And I said, "We're gonna be talking a lot more about this at the Carroll Center."

And I don't go into any complicated definitions about sensory development or sensory training, but in a very, practical way I want to do some very basic and important concepts, right? And hopefully in a way that they can start to make use of those things immediately. Even if they're not moving about themselves yet, they can start to listen to those things.

Okay? So I wanted to bring that up because it's... My predecessors, who I'll talk about in a little mi- a little bit, they thought it was very important to not overwhelm people with the notion that suddenly they were gonna have to be paying attention to all of the sensory output or input all the time and making sense of it all, right?

We wanted to ease into this notion with our new clients. and if you decide to tackle this, and in a little while I'm gonna ask you, after we've done some of these things, I'm gonna ask you how many folks are already incorporating these kinds of things, 'cause I'm very interested in that. but it's a nice soft way to introduce people to the notion of using their senses.

So all right. So what is, what is sensory development? It's a discipline for learning to gather and use non-visual information. The skills acquired through training are essential in order to understand and engage with the environment and the objects in that environment. And they form the basis for orientation, both in near space when you're working at a task in front of you, and in broad space when you're moving about.

So although we're gonna talk a lot about orient- orienting and staying oriented, I also am thinking about near space tasks and, I hope you will be too as we go through these things. The, the objectives of sensory development and sensory training itself are the following: we're helping people develop spatial perception.

Or sp- we're helping them to develop and improve, right? Spatial perception, tactile perception, auditory awareness and processing, non-visual problem-solving, orientation and proprioceptive, skills, which I'm gonna talk a little bit about. So these skills are applicable to all people who are visually impaired.

Even if you have a lot of vision and, or you're u- and you're using your vision, you can augment your usable vision with the sensory information, right? And integrate these two different kinds of pieces of information And again, I'm sure that many of you do empra- employ some of these practices, and I'm gonna ask a little bit more about that for your specific input, in a little while.

I do want to, mention very quickly a brief history of how this got to be at the Carroll Center. Father Carroll, our founder, was assigned to be, a chaplain down in, an Army hospital in, Avon, Connecticut, Avon Farms, Connecticut, right after the war. He didn't really know much about blindness, but he was sent down there as a chaplain.

and he worked with a guy... first of all, he discovered that working with these new blinded veterans, the ones that were able to move about most easily on the campus were the veterans who could create a picture of what was happening around them. And it was very obvious to him that some veterans were able to do this, and he studied up on this a little bit.

And he realized that some people were using information to create kind of a map, and then they were able to move through their environment more easily. and he wanted to incorporate this into what became... It wasn't when he got there, but it became the first rehabilitation program. He was assigned to be a chaplain, but when he talked to the doctors and nurses and said, "What are we gonna do with these young men?

What are they... What's gonna happen to them when they leave?" The doctors and nurses were like, our job is to patch them up. S- you know, send them home, after we've addressed their medical issues." And Father Carroll was, I think he was just very struck by the fact that many of these young blinded veterans, were, were- needed more than just the physical, medical attention.

And he and some others began to put together, what became really the first rehabilitation, program. And, he invited this friend of his named Baba Mendola, who was an artist, who had graduated at, from Yale, to come over and talk to the blinded veterans. And, Baba Mendola was a sculptor, and he was very interested in the feel of form and how it could, by putting your hands on something, you could start to create images in your mind of what that thing was.

And Baba Mendola loved meeting with these veterans, and Father Carroll kept inviting him back. And he was trying to help clients or veterans to really use their sense of touch, and their own imagination and their visual history to create pictures of things that they were feeling. And he termed, he coined this term called vidiation.

And vidiation was like creating a picture of something even though you couldn't actually see that thing in front of you based on sensory information All right, so why am I telling you all of that background? Father Carroll came back to Boston and opened up the, what became the Carroll Center for the Blind.

It wasn't named that orig- originally. And Bob Ammendola came with him and stayed at the Carroll Center for the next 30 years, and developed a full curriculum about sensory development. And it's his work, and the work of his predecessor, a woman named Nancy Campbell, that we use to this day at the Carroll Center.

they each created some training documents, which I'll talk about at the very end of the program, which we still use, although some of the exercises are site-specific so anyway, I wanted to tell you that because it's, a long part of our history at the Carroll Center, and sensory development has always been integrated with all of the classwork and the coursework, that's been offered at the Carroll Center.

okay, so let's, switch gears a little bit. I'm gonna talk a little bit about s- a few glossary of terms, and then I'm gonna go over three exercises with you today that we, do at the Carroll Center with clients. Things that you could probably modify, I know you'll be able to modify these if you wanted to do these things with your own, students or clients.

I wanna talk about a couple of quick terms very quickly, 'cause I'm gonna be using them later on. One of them is, kinesthesia. Kinesthesia is the perception of body movements and changes in position. It's often called the muscle memory or the kinesthetic sense, and it relies on sensory s- receptors in your muscles and joints and tendons to track limb movement and position without relying on vision, right?

Kinesthesia is actively focuses on detecting body movement, how and at what speed your limbs are moving at. So it's very important to sensory training and sensory awareness, and very important to the lessons that we're gonna be talking about today. proprioception is ... it's a similar term, often called the sixth sense.

It's sort of your awareness of your body in space, but it doesn't have as much to do with movement as kinesthesia. and then videation I already talked about. That's the f- a form of visualization based on information coming to you from your non-visual senses, right? It may be accompanied by recalling visual information from your own memory, right?

A person might say after walking with someone, a sighted guide or their mobility instructor, "Oh, this is like the path that I walked on as a child," right? Or, "Oh, I had a, I, I had a flower garden that was exactly like this," as they smell flowers, right? So it's their senses creating pictures in their mind if they have a, a visual memory.

and then the last thing I wanna share is mapping, the term mapping. Mapping is used for both formally and informally in almost every aspect of skill training, with folks who are visually impaired. Mapping can be considered as a plan or a schema which organizes information about the environment in a shorthand fashion.

It provides the basis for intentional rather than random movement. Okay? So for example, for those of you who are O&M instructors, you might ask someone, "Describe the route that we just made." You're teaching a person a new route, and you want them to sh- describe very briefly, is it like an L? Is it like an S?

Is it like a Z, right? people are starting ... You're encouraging them to start mapping out the, where they are as they move through that space, and that's augmented by the sensory information that they're picking up, right? Not only the landmarks that you might be pointing out as an instructor. okay. are there any questions

Before we get into our first exercise, are there any questions about, any of the things that I've covered thus far? I wanted to set up a, a sort of how it's ... sensory training is introduced at the Carroll Center, where it came from, and some terms. But any questions I can answer before we get into, the exercises?

TJ Roberts: We are good to go

Paul Hastings: Okay, good. All right, so the first exercise that has been done at the Carroll Center for 50 years is called TKG, touch, kinesthesia, and grasp. And that's why I wanted to talk about kinesthesia. So Baba Mendel developed the concept of how these three functions of touch, kinesthesia, and grasp come together to fully use the sense of touch in exploring objects.

Through these exercises, at first unfamiliar objects become a source of important information. It's particularly important for those new to blindness or vision loss. And Jennifer hit the nail on the head when she said at the beginning of this, seminar that, for a lot of people, it, you're helping them to be purposeful In their exploration, right?

we're trying as instructors to be, to help a person be purposeful in the way that they explore something tactually, or the way they explore their environment with their cane, or the way that they maybe are exploring items that you've put before them for a lesson you're about to, perform, right?

So think of this as kind of a purposeful exploration exercise. Okay, so TKG, touch, kinesthesia, grasp. In touch, the first... I- it's really just contact only, right? This is when a person, you might ask a person to touch something that you've given them or put on the table, and they, know there's something there.

It's hard, or it's cool, or it's fuzzy, or it's pointy, right? So you're just asking them, "What is the first sensation that you are experiencing as you touch this object in front of you?" And then you're gonna ask them to move your hand around that object, right? This is the kinesthesia. This is how they grasp the...

Or this is how they... I shouldn't say grasp, because we're gonna talk about that in a minute. This is how they start to understand through movement and shape, of the, or through movement and motion what the shape of this object is. They might say, "Oh, this thing is, has a right angle to it. It feels square."

Or, "This thing is, angular or wavy," or, "The sur- surface is uneven." So we might prompt them by saying, "What shapes do you notice in this object by moving your hand across the surface of it or on the sides of the object?" And then the last part is grasp. This is multiple touchpoints, right?

Plus passive kinesthesia. So the minute you put your hand on it, you're picking up information. You can move your hand around one surface, but as soon as you begin to use... And you can use both hands at this point. Grasp is giving you multiple touchpoints. This is when people usually have the aha moment.

They might say, "This feels like a ball," or, "This feels like a tube," or, "This feels like a shoe, or a pot," or whatever, right? this is when they start to put all of these th- things together. Now, this happens instantaneously for many people. But for people who are new to blindness and are maybe fearful about using their sense of touch, this is an important very early on step to getting people to, be thoughtful about exploring things tactilely.

So, let me, let me run you through a, a, a more sophisticated... By the way, you can do this with something very simple. You could give a client a, something like a teapot or, I don't know, a, Tupperware container with something in it, right? As, as a way to introduce this. give them something that's a little bit big, not tiny.

You don't want them, You don't want it such that, if you gave them, for example, a car key, they're gonna know what that is instantly, right? You want something that they can explore with both of their hands, okay? And, it's a great exercise to get people warmed up to this idea of tactile exploration.

Here's a more sophisticated version of that. When a student is looking for a door, maybe they're getting up, they're finished with you or, the exercise, the lesson is over, and they're going towards the door. They might go towards the door and feel a hard, cold object, but they discover after they put their hand on it, it's not the, the doorknob that they were expecting, right?

With further inspection, they discover, that the cold object is actually the hinge, okay? They can feel it. A hinge has a very particular feel. It's got a tubular kind of, feel to it. Instead of feeling disoriented because they were looking for the doorknob and they're not at the doorknob, the hinge provides a wealth of information.

The hinge is attached to the flat plane of the door, and the doorknob will be on the opposite side of the hinge, right? The opposite side of the plane from the hinge. That is a great orientation point right there. And then you can ask the student, "What, at what angle are you experiencing this plane of the door?"

'Cause once they feel the hinge or even the knob, they can start to situate themselves to the door itself, right? You can ask them, can they place their shoulders parallel to the plane of the door so they can walk through it when it's open? This instantly improves the student's image and their knowledge of the situation and their relationship to it.

So that, that's a little example of TKG right there, but in a much, a more practical and broader spectrum. You reach for the door. You think you're at the, the knob, but you're at the hinge. And right away from that little bit, suddenly the situation becomes more clear to them. so I would encourage people to start, if you're thinking about sensory training, or sensory development exercises, TKG is the easiest way to wade into this.

Does anybody do anything like what I just described in their work with students? Any kind of low-level tactile exploration, exercise?

No? Okay. then this is new to you. That's good. I feel like I'm introducing you to some new things. All right, so we're gonna move on to our next exercise, which is, more sophisticated. the great thing about TKT is you can do it anywhere, any time, right? It's great for at home, outside, mobile, being in the car, whatever.

You can do it over and over again. And it's, it- you don't wanna make light of the situation. You don't wanna be saying, "Oh," like this is a game, "Guess what it is." It's, really not about that. It's about them being more purposeful about the way that they gather information tactilely. okay, so let's move on to our next exercise.

This exercise at the Carroll Center is called the facial vision, exercise. And, facial vision is something that we called it, but it's also called object detection and many other things. And some of you may have- may do this as well. Facial vision is using nerve receptors in your face and your hearing to perceive objects or their absence.

and you're learning to trust and use this ability d- that will provide valuable information for your orientation Okay? This is something that mobility instructors are probably well familiar with. initially, this exercise is best done indoors in a quiet environment, at least to my mind. Because when you get outdoors, there's so many things going on.

but it's a great exercise to do outdoors after you practice it with your student. it requires one... two things. It requires, that you have a flat, smooth panel, like a s- p- stiff piece of cardboard or maybe a thin piece of plywood. It should be 16 inches by 16 inches, okay? So you can just use a big piece of cardboard from a box or something like that.

And the other thing you need is a movable sound source, like a smartphone or a radio, okay? Now, there are two principles at play in helping a client understand and use facial vision, and you want to explain this to them. and by the way, you all know this, but my outline, in the notes for this lecture are all on this, are posted here, so you'll be able to read more about this.

But the two principles at play are these. Cutaneous nerve endings in our skin perceive the, presence of objects when they are close to us, right? This is something that we all know about. Your... You get a tingling sensation, right? Not only on your face, but even maybe on your arms or your legs if there's an object very close to you, right?

This happens all the time, but we're not always aware of this phenomenon, right? And vision overrides this sensory input, right? So we're usually relying on our vision to let us know when we get close to an object, right? If your vision is no longer useful for that purpose, this is something that you're...

that's happening in your body all the time. It's merely an issue... not merely, but it's an issue of making your student in- aware of this and harnessing its use now let's talk about sound a little bit. When sound bounces off an object, the quality of that sound changes. We've all experienced echoes, right?

Some sound, like the movement of air, is so subtle that we don't perceive it as sound, but more like a feeling or sensation because actually air is moving about, right? And when it bumps up against an object, you can sense a change, believe it or not. as we get closer to that object, the air between us and that object reverberates like a very subtle echo.

We perceive this phenomenon from our ears, and our, the senses in our skin even though we're not actually hearing anything. We're not hearing that, a a real sound. We're really perceiving the change in the air as we get closer to an object. These two phenomena work together in a powerful way to help us perceive objects and their distance from us, right?

It takes some practice to both perceive and use the information effectively. Incorporating its use in orientation and mobility is an extremely valuable tool both indoors, and out, okay? So not only are people learning about it in this exercise, but through practice they're gonna begin to trust that it actually is a real thing.

'Cause a lot of people when I explain this to them look at me like I'm crazy, "I don't think this is ... I don't know how this is gonna work," okay? But it does . It does. So here's how the exercise goes. You wanna place the sound source about 15 a- feet away from the student, okay? Ask the student to walk slowly towards the sound source.

So you're gonna put on your phone or a radio at a low decibel level, right? Something soft, right? Ask them to work- walk slowly towards the sound source. No cane if possible because the cane will create its own echo as the client taps towards that sound source. So you wanna do this in an environment that they feel safe and comfortable in, okay?

And you're gonna ask them to walk towards the sound source, and then you're gonna ask them to stop when they perceive that the object in ... that there's an object in front of them, and that object is gonna be you holding up that flat panel. Okay? After they begin walking, then you place yourself between the student and the sound source, okay?

Quietly. Hold up the panel so that it's at the level of their face. Okay? Wherever their face is, you wanna hold it up. So picture this, the ob- the, the, sound source is behind you, the client is walking towards you, right? And you are holding up the panel in front of their face, which might be the same as your face.

Okay? And you're gonna ask them to be aware, 'cause you've explained how this is gonna work. You're gonna ask them to be aware of just sensing something in front of them. Okay? And you're gonna ask them to stop when they feel they're close to this object. I say be aware of the sensations that they'll feel on their face and their ears as they proach- approach the object, and ask them to stop when they perceive that they're one or two feet away.

Often the first or second attempt at this will be unsuccessful. The student will either bump right into the object, okay? And you're gonna be there to make sure they're walking at a nice slow pace, right? Or they're gonna stop maybe five feet away, thinking they perceive something, but maybe, they really don't.

Okay? And you can let them know. You can say, "Oh, you're, several feet away from this," or, you're, If they're right up next to it, you can put their hand on it. Now, something that I have not talked about in these exercise, and this is... I apologize. You wanna ask the client to close their eyes when they do this, right?

If you have a pair of blindfold and they trust that this is a teaching tool that they, will help them to learn these, these skills, that would be great. I always use a pair of blindfold, and I explain very clearly it's not to make a person feel more blind that they, than they are. It's simply a tool that will allow them to attend to non-visual information, because it will be blocking out any light that might be confusing or anything else that would be visual if they don't feel comfortable or you don't have the blindfold, they can simply close their eyes.

Okay? So often, as I said, it doesn't work the first time, and that's fine. That's perfectly normal. So then I might have them do it again, and I might ... You wanna make sure the environment's very cl- very quiet, and you repeat the exercise, being as quiet as possible, and again, ask them to pay attention to the sensation.

And honestly, nine times out of 10, they will start to learn to sense or pick up on this, this feeling when they get close to the object. And it can be a very powerful, exercise for people. and you might say to them, and I've heard this from a coworker of mine. a coworker of mine who's blind says, "I move around my house all the time without bumping into anything, not just because I know the, layout, but I sense when I'm going

getting near objects, and I adjust myself accordingly." And all ... O&M instructors might be using this, technique as they teach people, to walk a straight line between maybe a parallel signs, a sound source, and maybe some trees or a brick wall or something like that. They can feel as they get closer to the wall and feel as they get away from it some students will experience what we call a sound shadow.

They might know when they're close to the board, not because they're using this newfound sense of facial vision, but because the sound that they're listening for becomes quieter because they're getting very close to the board and the board is asking- acting as a, a kind of a, a muffle- a muffler, right? So that's a whole nother

Using sound shadows is a whole nother lesson, which I would do at a different time. But if they experience that, you might say, "Why did you stop there?" And they'll say, "Oh, the sound was very quiet." And, they might be using the sound shadow to help them, and that's fine. You could say, "It's a great thing, and when you get outdoors, you'll be able to f- to start to use sound shadows all the time."

If you're walking, down the street and you- cars are going by, and you, they go by a telephone pole. That telephone pole blocks the sound of the car for just a second or two. That's a sound shadow. It's almost like the shadow you would feel, from if the sun is blocked as you're walking by, the, the trunk of a tree.

Okay? so that's facial vision. It's very, powerful. It takes some time for folks. and at the end, I'm gonna talk about some barriers to learning all of these things, but I wanna mention this one now. If a person has a difficult time hearing, they might be trying to listen for something that they're not going to hear.

I always tell people facial vision is as much about the, receptors in your skin as it is about hearing itself. So even a person who's not, who does not have great hearing, can often start to master this use of their what we call facial vision or object detection. all right. Any questions about that exercise?

I'm being mindful of the time here. Oh, yikes. Yeah. that might do it for our exercises, 'cause I do wanna leave time. Jennifer, what do you think? Should, I open it up for questions at this point, or do I have time for one more, exercise?

Jennifer Ottowitz: Yeah, why don't we, if you can quickly go through the last exercise, that will be great.

Yes. And then what we can do, Paul's willing to stay on for a couple- Yeah ... more minutes to answer questions if you have them, but we'll be sure to give the closing code, close, as close to 4:00 as we can, in case any of you have to, leave. but yeah, I'll be quiet so you can jump in with the ra- last exercise.

Okay.

Paul Hastings: Okay, and I apologize for running through this last one quickly. The, this last exercise is called shape walking, okay? A student can improve their, kinesthetic abilities by carefully monitoring their movement as they move through space, paying particular attention to their sense of turn. This awareness improves the student's ability to orient themselves and to remain oriented as they move about.

So as a former mobility instructor, I know one of the most difficult things is to walk a straight line, right? To travel a straight line, to walk, in a place where you're not aware of the changes, the turns that you're making. A person can become very disoriented very quickly if they're not aware that they're actually turning their body when they don't intend to.

So very quickly, using a sound source, we did this indoors in a quiet room. We use a sound source 10 feet away from the client, right? Could be your phone or your, or your, a, a radio, okay? You're gonna ask the student with the ... walking towards the sound source if they can make letters or shapes that you ask them to make.

So I would put the, the phone on, and I would say, "Listen to that music. I want you to make an N, a giant N, which means you have to walk towards the sound source, and at some point you have to walk away from it, putting it on your, right shoulder, and then you're gonna have to walk back towards it.

But it should look like an N, so you need to think about where you are in relation to that sound source, and you wanna think about what the letter N looks like." If they're not familiar with letters, if they're a person who's, who doesn't do print, you could ask them to work, make a big square, okay? So put the sound source in front of them, walk towards that sound source, then they would have to make a right-hand turn, then they would have to make another right hand turn, another right hand turn, and walk back to the sound source.

This is a very difficult, exercise. I shouldn't say that. It's difficult at first. Clients are trying to pay attention to where their body is turning, right? How long a leg ... for example, let's use the square. How long each leg of the square should be to make it a square? So you would be thinking, asking the client, how...

think about how far away from you, you from the radio you are, right? How long, how many steps does it take to get to the radio? And then when you take a right-hand turn, how- you should walk the same number of steps away from that sound source, right? And then when you make another right-hand turn, you should be making the same amount of steps.

It's giving a person a lot of, things to think about, but allowing them to focus in on their sense of turn with a sound source in the room, right? I start with something very easily, easy, and then I go to more difficult things, like maybe the letter P or an S. Those are hard because you don't have those hard right and left turns, right?

those are more gradual turns that you have to be thinking of. And what I do in this exercise is I will write down on my notepad what shape the person is making. If I ask them to make an X and they make a long rectangle, right? I will, when the exercise is over, I'll go up to the student and out with their hand, I will draw the shape that they made as they were walking.

So I'll say, "I wanted you to make a square," and I'll make the l- the sign of a square with my finger onto their palm, and I'll say, "Here's the shape that you made. It was a long, skinny rectangle." And which is fine. I'll tell them, "This is what we're here for. We're, learning about this. Can you do this again thinking about the, the four equilateral sides of a square?"

It's a very, powerful exercise that gets people to think about their own movement in space and using a sound source as that orientation point. And when they graduate onto more difficult things, you can take them outside and do it with the sun as a source of orientation or maybe traffic sounds, right?

Or simply the slope of a driveway. Okay? so that's, a quick, dirt, down and dirty exercise for shape walking. so those three exercise, TKG, shape walking, and, what was the middle one now? I forgot. Spatial vision are the basis for some of the instruction that went on at the Carroll Center for years and years in sensory training.

And I do wanna mention before we leave that the Carroll Center has available the printed material that includes these, these lessons. Unfortunately, they're not in accessible form, and it's only because they were illustrated by me, years and years ago, and we're, in the process of trying to make these, totally accessible, taking out the illustrations with descriptors.

But if you are interested in the printed form of these exercises, the Carroll Center, has the tra- the original training manual, available, and I can put that, give that information to Jennifer All right. Any questions? I know we're right at 4:00, 3:59. Any questions or comments, from anyone?

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