Sensory Processing, Tactile Differences, and Behavior in Adolescents With ADHD — Buyuktaskin et al. (2026)

The question

The researchers asked whether adolescents with ADHD differ from comparison adolescents in sensory processing, especially touch, and whether those sensory patterns are related to behavioral and emotional symptoms.

They also asked a more specific question: do the everyday sensory differences reported by adolescents show up as measurable differences in basic tactile detection and temporal discrimination in the laboratory?

What the researchers did

This was a small observational comparison study of adolescents ages 11–18.

• 26 adolescents with ADHD were included.
• 29 comparison adolescents were included.
• The ADHD participants were medication-free during the study.
• Participants with additional psychiatric disorders, clinically elevated subthreshold symptoms, intellectual disability, chronic disease, or autistic traits identified during the structured clinical evaluation were excluded.
• The ADHD group included predominantly inattentive, combined, and a small number of predominantly hyperactive presentations.

The researchers used three kinds of measures:

1. Adult/Adolescent Sensory Profile (AASP): self-reported real-world sensory patterns, including sensory sensitivity, avoidance, seeking, and low registration.
2. Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): self- and parent-reported emotional and behavioral difficulties.
3. Objective tactile tests: Somatosensory Detection Thresholds (SDT) and Somatosensory Temporal Discrimination Thresholds (STDT), which measured whether participants could detect touch stimulation and distinguish two closely timed tactile stimuli in a controlled laboratory setting.

What they found

Tactile sensitivity and avoidance stood out

Within the tactile domain, adolescents with ADHD reported significantly greater tactile sensory sensitivity and tactile sensory avoidance than comparison adolescents. These differences remained statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons.

The broader AASP sensory-sensitivity and sensory-avoidance quadrant scores were higher in the ADHD group at the uncorrected level, but those broader differences did not survive multiple-comparison correction.

There were no significant group differences in tactile sensory seeking or tactile low registration.

The laboratory sensory thresholds did not clearly differ

The groups did not differ significantly on the objective tactile detection or temporal-discrimination measures.

The tactile detection threshold was numerically higher in the ADHD group, but it did not reach statistical significance. The authors note that the study was only powered to detect relatively large effects, so a smaller difference could have been missed.

This is important because it suggests that an adolescent can experience meaningful sensory difficulty in daily life even when a narrow laboratory test of basic sensory detection does not show a clear impairment.

The authors argue that sensory thresholds do not map directly onto everyday sensory regulation. Laboratory tasks measure detection under structured, low-distraction conditions, while real life requires attention, filtering, emotional regulation, behavioral regulation, and adaptation to multiple sensory inputs at once.

Sensory patterns and behavior

Within the ADHD group:

• Tactile low registration was associated with more self-reported externalizing symptoms.
• Tactile low registration was also associated with greater parent-reported hyperactivity.
• Tactile sensory seeking was associated with more self-reported externalizing symptoms.

These are correlations, not evidence that sensory processing differences cause hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, oppositional behavior, or other externalizing behavior.

Some apparent overlap is also built into the constructs. Sensory seeking and ADHD hyperactivity can both involve movement, touching, impulsive behavior, or difficulty remaining still. Low registration can sometimes look like not noticing cues, not responding, or needing stronger input.

An especially useful clinical idea

The study helps separate two questions that are often treated as if they are the same:

Can the nervous system detect the sensory signal?

and

Can the person regulate attention, emotion, and behavior around sensory input in ordinary life?

An adolescent may perform adequately on a simple sensory-detection task and still become distracted, overloaded, avoidant, dysregulated, or highly sensory-seeking in a classroom, home, cafeteria, clothing store, sports setting, or social environment.

This makes sensory complaints no less real. It suggests that the relevant difficulty may involve the interaction among sensory input, attention, arousal, regulation, context, and environmental demands, rather than a basic inability to detect touch.

Why this is useful for understanding ADHD kids

Behavior is often interpreted before the context is examined.

A child who is moving, touching everything, avoiding clothing, becoming irritable in a noisy environment, seeming not to notice instructions, or escalating after prolonged sensory exposure may be described only as hyperactive, impulsive, oppositional, inattentive, or poorly behaved.

This study does not show that those behaviors are caused by sensory processing. It does support asking a second question:

What sensory demands were present, and what was the child having to regulate at the same time?

That question can change assessment and support without dismissing ADHD itself.

What this does not establish

This study does not show that:

• sensory differences are present in every child or adolescent with ADHD;
• sensory processing problems are a defining diagnostic feature of ADHD;
• a particular sensory pattern causes ADHD behavior;
• sensory interventions treat the core symptoms of ADHD;
• ADHD sensory differences are identical to autistic sensory differences;
• questionnaire reports and laboratory sensory thresholds are interchangeable measures.

Important limitations

• The sample was very small: 26 ADHD participants and 29 comparison adolescents.
• Power analyses indicated the study could reliably detect only large group differences and large within-group correlations.
• The sample excluded psychiatric comorbidity and subthreshold autistic traits, making it less representative of many real-world ADHD populations where co-occurring conditions are common.
• Standardized IQ scores were not collected.
• The researchers did not use a dedicated quantitative ADHD symptom-severity measure; the SDQ was used instead.
• Exact age at diagnosis and detailed functional-impairment measures were not available.
• Most ADHD participants were boys, so this study cannot tell us much specifically about girls with ADHD.
• Because the study is observational, causal conclusions cannot be drawn.

A useful sentence for parent or clinician education

Sensory behavior in ADHD may not simply reflect how strongly a child detects a sound, touch, or other stimulus. The harder part may be managing attention, arousal, emotion, and behavior when sensory input is happening in real life.

Connection to existing research

The paper places its findings within a larger literature showing that ADHD groups, on average, report more sensory sensitivity, sensory avoidance, sensory seeking, low registration, and sensory discrimination differences than comparison groups. The authors specifically cite the 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis by Jurek et al. as evidence that sensory-processing differences occur across multiple sensory domains in ADHD.

This study adds a useful nuance: reported real-world sensory differences and narrow psychophysical sensory thresholds are not the same construct and may not move together.

Source

Buyuktaskin, D., Aktar-Songür, İ., Özaslan, A., Kurt, Z. K., Guney, E., Iseri, E., Gunendi, Z., & Cengiz, B. (2026). Linking sensory processing patterns and somatosensory thresholds to behavioural and emotional symptoms in adolescents with ADHD. Scientific Reports. Article in Press. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-63869-2

Accepted July 21, 2026. The uploaded manuscript is an Article in Press / unedited accepted manuscript, so wording and presentation may change before final publication.

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