Strategy
The Alert Program, also known as “How Does Your Engine Run?”, was developed by occupational therapists Mary Sue Williams and Sherry Shellenberger. It teaches children and adults to understand arousal using a car engine metaphor: running on high (hyped up, agitated), running on low (sluggish, lethargic), or running just right (alert, focused, ready to engage).
Unlike Zones of Regulation, which maps emotions to colour categories, the Alert Program explicitly maps sensory inputs across modalities to arousal outcomes. Children learn that specific sensory experiences shift engine speed predictably: jumping increases it, calm music decreases it, crunchy food awakens it, deep pressure settles it. This sensory-systems grounding is the programme’s strength.
When it applies
The Alert Program is used in school settings, occupational therapy clinics, and at home, spanning preschool through adulthood with adaptations for different developmental levels. It is most commonly applied to autistic children and those with ADHD or sensory processing differences but is designed as universal.
Its concrete physical language (“engine running high/low”) may be more accessible than Zones’ abstract emotional categorisation, potentially including people with intellectual disability, though this has not been formally studied.
How it works
The programme proceeds through three stages:
- Identifying engine speeds. Learning to recognise whether your engine is running high, low, or just right, using physical awareness rather than emotional labelling.
- Experimenting with strategies. Exploring how different sensory inputs (across five modalities: movement, touch, vision, hearing, oral input) change engine speed. This is done through direct experimentation, not instruction.
- Self-regulation. Choosing and using strategies independently to adjust engine speed when needed.
What the evidence shows
The evidence base is limited but more systematic than Zones of Regulation. The Alert Program maintains a research documentation page listing studies across autism, ADHD, developmental disabilities, and adult populations, examining effects on communication, interaction skills, sensory processing awareness, and arousal self-management.
Few rigorous RCTs exist. Most studies are small, quasi-experimental, or report implementation feasibility rather than efficacy. Large-scale trials with autistic participants are lacking.
What to watch for
Strengths:
- Sensory-systems grounding is more robust than emotion-focused approaches. “My engine goes up when the classroom is noisy” is more useful than “I feel Yellow when things are loud.”
- Active experimentation with sensory strategies rather than top-down instruction.
- “Just right” is a state, not a moral category, avoiding the Green-is-good hierarchy Zones creates (though implementation can drift).
Risks:
- “Just right” can become a compliance target. Teachers want the engine running just right, so the child performs that state. See Masking and camouflaging.
- Evidence is insufficient for confident efficacy claims.
- No research includes people with intellectual disability.
Evidence notes
Evidence level: emerging-pattern. Better grounded in sensory processing theory than Zones of Regulation, with some supporting research, but not yet meeting evidence-based practice thresholds by major professional bodies’ standards.