Assessing sensory processing differences in children with idiopathic toe walking: A pilot study

Idiopathic toe-walking (ITW) refers to persistent walking without heel contact for unknown reasons. An underexplored area is the relationship of sensory processing to ITW. This study presents methods to assess sensory differences in individuals with ITW and summarizes results from a pilot testing of the measures. This pilot study included nine children and one young adult with ITW. Ten age-matched controls were recruited to provide a comparison group when norms were not available in the literature. The measures included in this study were as follows: sensory questionnaires; electrodermal activity response to sensory stimuli; monofilaments; biothesiometer; gait on different surfaces; NeuroCom® SMART Balance Master® Sensory Organization Test and Adaptation Test; and ankle position matching. All study procedures were completed in about 3 hours. Children as young as 4 years were able to complete the measures. We observed overall differences in sensory processing, specifically, higher Sensory Processing Measure scores (p = .011), higher resting electrodermal activity (p = .012), increases in heel-toe walking on novel surfaces (p = .034), and more falls with balance perturbation (p = .007) in individuals with ITW. A subset of individuals also showed tactile hyposensitivity (5 out of 10 in the ITW group) and poor equilibrium scores in the Sensory Organization Test (4 out of 9 in the ITW group, 1 unable to complete the test). Our results confirmed the heterogeneity in the etiology of ITW. We propose that further testing in sensory modulation, tactile processing, and vestibular processing is needed to fully explore the impact of sensory processing on children with ITW.