Sensory Processing Measure (SPM)
What It Measures
The SPM asks someone who knows a person well how they handle sensory information in everyday settings — at home, at school, and out in the community. Rather than testing performance in a clinic, it captures what a caregiver, teacher, or the person themselves actually notices day to day.
Eight scales are rated: vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell, body awareness, balance and motion, planning and ideas, and social participation. Items ask how often specific behaviours occur, and the responses reveal not just whether a sensory system is affected but how — over-reactivity, under-reactivity, sensory seeking, or difficulty with perception. Separate forms exist for five age levels from infancy through adulthood.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: Available on printed forms or through the WPS online platform, which is HIPAA compliant. Reproduction requires publisher permission.
Learn More: The current edition is the SPM-2 (2021), which merged the original SPM and SPM-Preschool and extended the range to five age levels — Infant/Toddler, Preschool, Child, Adolescent, and Adult — covering 4 months to 87 years. It was standardised on 3,850 participants with separate representative samples at each level, and the adolescent and adult forms can be self-reported rather than proxy-completed.