A comparison of patterns of sensory processing in children with and without developmental disabilities.
The Chinese Sensory Profile waves a bright flag when autism or ADHD is present, but stays quiet on which one it is.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave the Chinese Sensory Profile to three groups of kids: some with autism, some with ADHD, and some with no diagnosis.
They wanted to see if the scores could tell the groups apart.
What they found
The profile easily flagged kids with autism or ADHD from neurotypical peers.
It could not tell autism from ADHD — the two clinical groups looked the same on paper.
Age changed the scores, but in different ways for each diagnosis.
How this fits with other research
Fabio et al. (2024) repeated the idea with teens and saw the same split: big gap between ADHD and neurotypical, no gap inside the clinical group.
MacFarland et al. (2025) went one step further. They removed ADHD noise with statistics and showed that sensory sensitivity still predicted autism traits.
Together the papers say: sensory scores are great for spotting that something is going on, but you will need more data to decide if it is autism or ADHD.
Why it matters
Use the Chinese Sensory Profile as a red-flag tool, not a label maker. A high score tells you to dig deeper, not which box to check. Pair it with attention and social checks to finish the picture.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study compared the patterns of sensory processing among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and children without disabilities. Parents reported on the frequency of sensory processing issues by completing the Chinese Sensory Profile (CSP). Children with disabilities (ASD or ADHD) exhibited significantly more sensory processing issues than children without disabilities. The results of GLM and discriminant analyses showed that the CSP effectively differentiated between children with and without developmental disabilities. But it failed to identify major differences in sensory processing issues between children with either ASD or ADHD. Sensory processing issues could be one of many criteria that characterize and differentiate the features of children with different developmental disabilities. Although no significant gender differences in sensory processing issues appeared, age was a significant cofounding factor in evaluating sensory processing. Children without disabilities showed some small decreases in sensory processing issues as they aged from 6 to 12 years old. Children with ASD showed some decrease in sensory processing issues over the span of their childhood, while children with ADHD showed a significant increase in auditory processing issues as well as small increases in many aspects of sensory processing.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2009 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.07.009