The truth is, we autistic people take in a lot!

Both on a sensory level (such as visually) and cognitively (so in terms of information).

When scientists were able to investigate the signals between eye and brain, they were surprised to find that most of the signals moved brain-to-eye, when seeing – and not eye-to-brain, as predicted.

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That means that we humans rely a great deal on priors. Stuff we already know.

We are actually ‘seeing’ far less of what’s in front of us that we’d imagine. We’re mostly ‘filling in the gaps’…

It does make sense, of course. I guess that’s how you can drive all the way home from work without noticing.

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I’m remembering an anecdote about a time Lorna Wing was looking at a dolls’ house with a young autistic boy.

She pointed at the bed and asked, “What’s this?” He answered, “A bed.” She pointed at the cover. He said, “A quilt.” Finally, she pointed at the pillow. He replied, “It’s a piece of ravioli.”

Somewhat astonished, she looked more closely – and saw that it did indeed look just like a piece of ravioli.   

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In effect, the boy was not allowing his pre-existing beliefs to cloud his judgement about that piece of ravioli on the bed 😉

All told, could it be that, as autistic people, we’re simply taking in more signals from the outside world than most?

The research of Pellicano and Burr suggests autistic perception seems indeed to rely less heavily on expectations and preconceptions than the norm.

We may, in fact, be more ‘eye to brain’, so to speak.

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All of this means it can be a) more tiring, and b) more time-consuming for us to move through the world, taking it in.

This can make everyday environments more effortful (more processing load, more filtering required), which can feel more tiring and sometimes slower.

This could also account for why autistic people need a lot of low-stimulus downtime, to recover from it all. Anyone would!

End of thread 🧵

Refs below.

Refs:

Zapparrata, N. M., Brooks, P. J., & Ober, T. M. (2023). Slower Processing Speed in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-analytic Investigation. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36112302/

— Meta-analysis: autistic groups slower on time-based tasks.

Morsanyi, K., Handley, S. J., & Evans, J. S. B. T. (2009). Heuristics and biases in autism: Less biased but not more logical.
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/heuristics-and-biases-in-autism-less-biased-but-not-more-logical/

— Autistic adolescents show reduced bias on heuristic tasks.

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