Sensory overload

Sensory overload occurs when one or more of the body's senses experiences over-stimulation from the environment. There are many environmental elements that affect an individual. Examples of these elements are urbanization, crowding, noise, mass media, technology, and the explosive growth of information.[1][2][3]

Symptoms

There are a wide variety of symptoms that have been found to be associated with sensory overload. These symptoms can occur in both children and adults. Some of these symptoms are:

  • Irritability
  • "Shutting down", or refusing to participate in activities and interact with others
  • Avoiding touching or being touched
  • Complaining about noises that do not affect others
  • Getting overexcited
  • Covering eyes around bright lights
  • Making poor eye contact
  • Covering ears to close out sounds or voices
  • Constantly changing activities without completing any tasks
  • Irritation caused by shoes, socks, tags, or different textures
  • Over-sensitivity to touch, movement, sights, or sounds
  • Having trouble with social interactions
  • Extremely high or extremely low activity levels[1]
  • Muscle tension
  • Hyperhidrosis (Extreme Perspiration)
  • Fidgeting and restlessness
  • Angry outbursts
  • Self-harm
  • Sleeplessness and fatigue
  • Difficulty concentrating[4]

Causes

Sensory overload can result from the overstimulation of any of the senses.

  • Hearing: loud noise, or sound from multiple sources, such as several people talking at once.
  • Sight: crowded or cluttered spaces, bright lights, strobing lights, or environments with much movement such as crowds or frequent scene changes on television.
  • Smell and taste: strong aromas or spicy foods.
  • Touch: tactile sensations such as being touched by another person or the feel of cloth on skin.[5]
  • Vestibular: such as dizziness or motion sickness.

As component of other disorders and conditions

Sensory overload has been found to be associated with other disorders and conditions such as:

Treatments

There are many different ways to treat sensory overload. One is to reduce this tension is to participate in occupational therapy; however, there are many ways for people with symptoms to reduce it themselves. Being able to identify one's own triggers of sensory overload can help reduce, eliminate, or avoid them.[10] Most often the quickest way to ease sensory overload symptoms is to remove oneself from the situation. Deep pressure against the skin combined with proprioceptive input that stimulates the receptors in the joints and ligaments often calms the nervous system. Reducing sensory input such as eliminating distressing sounds and lowering the lights can help. Calming, focusing on music works for some. If a quick break does not relieve the problem, an extended rest is advised. People with sensory processing issues may benefit from a sensory diet of activities and accommodations designed to prevent sensory overload and retrain the brain to process sensory input more typically. It is important in situations of sensory overload to calm oneself and return to a normal level.[5]

Prevention

There are three different methods to address sensory overload: avoidance, setting limits, and meditation. The process of avoidance involves creating a more quiet and orderly environment. This includes keeping the noise to a minimum and reducing the sense of clutter. To prevent sensory overload, it is important to rest before big events and focus your attention and energy on one thing at a time. Setting limits involves restricting the amount of time spent on various activities and selecting settings to carefully avoid crowds and noise. One may also limit interactions with specific people to help prevent sensory overload.[5]

Marketing

It can be difficult to distinguish and understand information when experiencing sensory overload. Even such meaningless stimuli such as white noise or flickering lights may induce sensory overload.[11] Sensory overload is common among consumers as many corporations compete with each other especially when advertising. Advertisers will use the best colours, words, sounds, textures, designs and much more to get the attention of a customer.[12] This can influence the consumer, as they will be drawn to a product that is more attention grabbing.[12] However, policy makers and advertisers must be aware that too much information or attention-grabbing products can cause sensory overload.

Implications of public policy

Implications of public policy in regards to information overload have two main assumptions.[11] The assumptions the policymakers have are, first, to assume that consumers have a great deal of processing capacity and a great deal of time to process information.[11] Secondly, consumers can always absorb the information without serious concern about how much information has been presented.[11] As researchers have pointed out, policymakers should better understand the difference between the process and availability of information.[11] This will help decrease the possibility of information overload. In some cases, the time to process such information in a commercial can be 6 out of 30 seconds.[11] This can lead consumers confused and overloaded with such fast-paced information thrown at them. To understand how consumers process information three factors must be analyzed. Factors such as the amount of information given, the source of corrective information and the way in which it is all presented to the consumer.[11] Different types of media have different processing demands. An optimal outcome for policy makers to influence advertisers to try is to present information through a TV commercial stating simple facts about a product and then encourage the audience to check out their website for more details. Therefore, their quick processing time of a commercial was not overloaded with information thus saving the consumer from sensory overload.

Implications for the consumers

Consumers today are forced to learn to cope with overloading and an abundance of information,[11] through the radio, billboards, television, newspapers and much more. Information is everywhere and being thrown at consumers from every angle and direction. Therefore, Naresh K. Malhotra, the author of Information and Sensory Overload presents the following guidelines.[11] First, consumers must try to limit the intake of external information and sensory inputs to avoid sensory overload.[11] This can be done by tuning out irrelevant information presented by the media and marketers to get the attention of the consumer. Second, record important information externally rather than mentally. Information can be easily forgotten mentally once the individual becomes overloaded by their sense.[11] Thus it is recommended for a consumer to write down important information rather than store it mentally. Third, when examining a product, do not overload their senses by examining more than five products at a time.[11] This will lead to confusion and frustration.[11] Fourth, process information where there is less irrelevant information around.[11] This will eliminate external information and sensory distractions such as white noise and other information presented in an environment. Finally, it is important to make consuming a pleasant and relaxed experience.[11] This will help diminish the stress, overwhelming feeling, and experience of sensory overload.

Human senses and marketing

Using the senses in marketing can be a useful sales tactic. Most commonly, marketers will take advantage of humans four out of five senses to increase the amount of information being presented to the customer.

  • The sense of smell can affect a person's evaluation of products. Researchers have suggested that good or bad feelings can be generated by smells and usually associated with upbringing, emotion, learning and even culture.[12] Therefore, the sense of smell is a tool to attract an individual’s attention to a certain product.
  • The sense of hearing is a powerful sense. The ears are capable of picking up all sorts of information and can contribute to people's feelings.[12] Marketers will play music to help create and control feelings within a consumer. This music can help create a positive and comfortable association with the brand.
  • The sense of touch helps determine the quality of a product.[12] Thus companies of certain products will make the sense of touch available to their consumers.[12] "Touch here" or "feel me" signs encourage customers to interact with the product. Allowing a company's customers to touch a product will help add information from their senses.
  • The sense of sight is the most focused-on sense by marketers.[12] Researchers have found that when consumers see warm colours such as orange or red their blood pressure and heart rate increase.[12] The opposite effect occurs when customers see cool colours such as green or blue.[12] Therefore, fast-food corporations will more than often use the colours red to symbolize fast and speedy for advertising and marketing purposes.

Case histories

Not many studies have been done on sensory overload, but one example of a sensory overload study was reported by Lipowski (1975)[13] as part of his research review on the topic that discussed the work done by Japanese researchers at Tohoku University. The Tohoku researchers exposed their subjects to intense visual and auditory stimuli presented randomly in a condition of confinement ranging in duration from three to five hours. Subjects showed heightened and sustained arousal as well as mood changes such as aggression, anxiety, and sadness. These results have helped open the door to further research on sensory overload.

History

Sociologist Georg Simmel contributed to the description of sensory overload in his 1903 essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life." Simmel describes an urban landscape of constant sensory stimuli against which the city-dweller must create a barrier in order to remain sane. For Simmel, the sensory overload of modern urban life depletes the body’s reservoirs of energy, leading, among other things, to a jaded or blasé [blasiert] mentality and a calculating, instrumentalizing approach to others.[14] Simmel's approach can be compared to Freud's writings on Shell shock as well as Walter Benjamin's analysis of "shock" and urban life in his 1939 essay "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire."

See also

References
  1. "What is Sensory Overload".
  2. Effects of Psychological Torture
  3. Isolation, Sensory Deprivation & Sensory Overload
  4. "SPD & Psychopathology in Adults". Sharon Heller.
  5. "Sensory Overload: Sources and Strategies". CFIDS & Fibromyalgia Self-Help.
  6. https://oxfordmedicine.com/view/10.1093/med/9780190228163.001.0001/med-9780190228163-chapter-11
  7. Ghadirian, A.M. (1976). "Sensory Perceptual Limitation in Schizophrenia". Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. 27: 115–119 – via JSTOR.
  8. O'Neill M; Jones RS (June 1997). "Sensory-perceptual abnormalities in autism: a case for more research?". J Autism Dev Disord. 27 (3): 283–93. doi:10.1023/A:1025850431170. PMID 9229259.
  9. Marco EJ; Hinkley LB; Hill SS; Nagarajan SS (May 2011). "Sensory processing in autism: a review of neurophysiologic findings". Pediatr. Res. 69 (5 Pt 2): 48R–54R. doi:10.1203/PDR.0b013e3182130c54. PMC 3086654. PMID 21289533.
  10. "Help for Adult SPD". SPD Support.
  11. Malhotra, Naresh K. (September 5, 2006). "Information and sensory overload. Information and sensory overload in psychology and marketing". Psychology and Marketing. 1 (3–4): 9–21. doi:10.1002/mar.4220010304.
  12. Pentz, Chris; Gerber, Charlene (May 14, 2013). "The influence of selected senses on consumer experience: A brandy case". Acta Commercii. 13. doi:10.4102/ac.v13i1.183.
  13. Lipowski, Z.J. (1975). "Sensory and information inputs overload: Behavioral effects". Comprehensive Psychiatry. 16 (3): 199–221. doi:10.1016/0010-440X(75)90047-4. ISSN 0010-440X. PMID 1139919.
  14. "The Metropolis and Mental Life". Modernism Lab Essays.
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