Subject: Information processing in autism.
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@KatyElphinstone This likely has a direct connection to the phrase "just tune it out" that we get all the time, especially with hearing and auditory processing. For whatever reason, I guess the NT brain just has better active filtering on the senses than the autistic brain? I'm blind, but from what I understand that degree of filtering is virtually required for vision to function, as the eyes generate a ton of spurious information such as motion blur on their own, not to mention the sheer amount of detail they can capture, and so the brain subjects it to heavy filtering to try and build a coherent mental perception. With ears, all the info is coming into the auditory cortex which also has to build a coherent mental perception (sound) out of it. And I guess that either the auditory cortex or whatever its output goes to just can have different degrees of filtering? These can be slightly manipulated by people, actually. It's a myth that blind people literally *hear* better than people who are not blind, but the case could theoretically be made that they *listen* better? Their brain, consciously or subconsciously, assigned more processing to their ears than a person who has to spend all that bandwidth on visual input instead. Although I haven't looked at correlations between blindness and auditory processing disorders and likelihood of overstimulation, I wonder if anyone's done research on that!
Edit: Not sure about auditory processing disorders and overstimulation specifically, but there is certainly evidence to suggest that the auditory cortex adapts itself to be more capable of perceiving detail. The example they use here in sound frequency and motion, and the frequency part might have something to do with that anecdotal correlation between blindness and enhanced pitch perception and musicality. https://www.washington.edu/news/2019/04/22/brains-of-blind-people-adapt-to-sharpen-sense-of-hearing-study-shows/The bandwidth idea is fascinating. I've spent time thinking about that in relation to social interactions and cues - that autistic people may develop expertise simply in areas other than human socialization. Most humans are not aware of how much bandwidth is dedicated to that topic, never having thought about it (fish: what is water?), & then think autistic people are somehow endowed with incredible/unusual ability.
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@KatyElphinstone Interesting angle on it. I have an analogy with computers that has worked pretty well before: Database optimization for read vs write. When you store information in a database, there are two basic ways to find it later: you can scan every record until you find the ones with that info, or you can use an index to look up the records that match the search term. Which is like looking up a word in a book's index to get a list of all the pages where that word is used – it's much faster to check only those pages than every page of the book. So it's faster to find the data, but the catch is that it takes a little work to keep the index updated as you add records. If you look stuff up more often than you add records, that trade-off works out and you spend less time overall.
I think of autistic processing as something like that. My autistic brain spends more time up front processing new information and building connections to other information, so it's faster for me to recall information or find interesting associations to other info. Just like keeping a database index up to date makes adding info a little slower so finding it later is a lot faster. It's all about trade-offs. Nobody can be the best at everything, especially when being the best means optimizing for that situation at the expense of others. I just want people to stop expecting me to have a write-optimized brain instead of a read-optimized one.
Aha yes, I see! And that would be where the pattern-seeking comes into it, too.
I seem to go very much in-depth in those subjects I'm interested in, creating webs of meaning (indexing) all over the place. My info recall is incredible in those areas.
Whereas I have no idea what the names of my neighbors are, or when the school committee meetings are taking place, and perhaps never will.
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Seymour, R. A., et al. (2019). Dysregulated oscillatory connectivity in the visual system in autism spectrum disorder. Brain.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6763739/— Reduced feedback V4→V1; feedforward similar between groups.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). Clinical Testing and Diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorder.
https://www.cdc.gov/autism/hcp/diagnosis/index.html— DSM-5 diagnostic criteria summary; includes sensory differences.
️And the ravioli story comes from the book 'Autism: A New Introduction to Psychological Theory and Current Debate', by Sue Fletcher-Watson & Francesca Happé.
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Aha yes, I see! And that would be where the pattern-seeking comes into it, too.
I seem to go very much in-depth in those subjects I'm interested in, creating webs of meaning (indexing) all over the place. My info recall is incredible in those areas.
Whereas I have no idea what the names of my neighbors are, or when the school committee meetings are taking place, and perhaps never will.
@KatyElphinstone Yep, that's like how you don't make an index for every table in a database, just the ones where lookup time is important. This works as an analogy, but I don't imagine that brains and databases work the same way. The point of the analogy is that there can be good reasons to spend more time incorporating new information, even if it looks like you're just being slow.
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@KatyElphinstone Yep, that's like how you don't make an index for every table in a database, just the ones where lookup time is important. This works as an analogy, but I don't imagine that brains and databases work the same way. The point of the analogy is that there can be good reasons to spend more time incorporating new information, even if it looks like you're just being slow.
The volume of information is important. You need a critical mass in order to make meaningful connections.
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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.
@KatyElphinstone I often find those classified as allistic (or ”normal”) to come of as a bit shallow.
To me they seem not able to, or even interested in, geting into the details, having deeper interests, or even maintaining discourse on a topic for a reasonably long time.
This feeling could also stem from my own occupational injuries. As a software engineer I spend my entire days drilling into the nitty gritty.
Third option is they’re masking, and do a good job at it. Hard to tell.
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@KatyElphinstone I often find those classified as allistic (or ”normal”) to come of as a bit shallow.
To me they seem not able to, or even interested in, geting into the details, having deeper interests, or even maintaining discourse on a topic for a reasonably long time.
This feeling could also stem from my own occupational injuries. As a software engineer I spend my entire days drilling into the nitty gritty.
Third option is they’re masking, and do a good job at it. Hard to tell.
I think masking can go pretty deep. To the point one doesn't even know one's doing it, I guess!
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@KatyElphinstone I often find those classified as allistic (or ”normal”) to come of as a bit shallow.
To me they seem not able to, or even interested in, geting into the details, having deeper interests, or even maintaining discourse on a topic for a reasonably long time.
This feeling could also stem from my own occupational injuries. As a software engineer I spend my entire days drilling into the nitty gritty.
Third option is they’re masking, and do a good job at it. Hard to tell.
@KatyElphinstone Shallow, and still worthy of care and respect, I should add. People are different; not everyone has the privilege of being born ’nerd able’.
So give your fellow ”alli” (can we please start calling allistic people that?) a hug (if they concent), or at least a pat on the shoulder, for trying their hardest to fit in among the rest of us.
They deserve a bit of encouragement now and then.
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The bandwidth idea is fascinating. I've spent time thinking about that in relation to social interactions and cues - that autistic people may develop expertise simply in areas other than human socialization. Most humans are not aware of how much bandwidth is dedicated to that topic, never having thought about it (fish: what is water?), & then think autistic people are somehow endowed with incredible/unusual ability.
@KatyElphinstone I assume the existence of the concept of mental bandwidth, but I think most people would agree it's a thing, although one could get into arguments about specializations of certain areas of the brain and how that contributes to things, since it's not just like a CPU that has to execute one stream of instructions. Overstimulation follows simply from there, not having enough bandwidth left to process all the incoming info. Certain kinds of brains that need specific levels of multitasking to keep themselves on track and productive have a minimum bandwidth requirement, otherwise that unused bandwidth is given to ADHD kinds of random thoughts. Drugs, life events, and sleep among many things are known to affect it regardless of what brain you're talkingabout.
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@KatyElphinstone I assume the existence of the concept of mental bandwidth, but I think most people would agree it's a thing, although one could get into arguments about specializations of certain areas of the brain and how that contributes to things, since it's not just like a CPU that has to execute one stream of instructions. Overstimulation follows simply from there, not having enough bandwidth left to process all the incoming info. Certain kinds of brains that need specific levels of multitasking to keep themselves on track and productive have a minimum bandwidth requirement, otherwise that unused bandwidth is given to ADHD kinds of random thoughts. Drugs, life events, and sleep among many things are known to affect it regardless of what brain you're talkingabout.
@KatyElphinstone Capacity might be a more apt term for it, but I tend to think in terms of bandwidth in the meaning as the instantaneous capacity, how much space is being used in the channel right now.
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@KatyElphinstone I assume the existence of the concept of mental bandwidth, but I think most people would agree it's a thing, although one could get into arguments about specializations of certain areas of the brain and how that contributes to things, since it's not just like a CPU that has to execute one stream of instructions. Overstimulation follows simply from there, not having enough bandwidth left to process all the incoming info. Certain kinds of brains that need specific levels of multitasking to keep themselves on track and productive have a minimum bandwidth requirement, otherwise that unused bandwidth is given to ADHD kinds of random thoughts. Drugs, life events, and sleep among many things are known to affect it regardless of what brain you're talkingabout.
@x0 @KatyElphinstone What you'e writing about bandwidth is exactly what is described by the monotropism theory.
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I once had to figure one out because it was broken. It was surprisingly complex! It would have been very useful to have you there!
@KatyElphinstone @markc568 @cordova5029 I find it relates to my, and I believe that of many other Autists, fascination with what Georges Perec named the infra-ordinary. Observing what is so ordinary that many others (mostly neurotypicals?) just don't see anymore. Also looking at things from unusual angles.
For instance I find that what I photograph and how is typically Autistic (which you can check at https://www.flickr.com/photos/acrostich/?)
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@KatyElphinstone @markc568 @cordova5029 I find it relates to my, and I believe that of many other Autists, fascination with what Georges Perec named the infra-ordinary. Observing what is so ordinary that many others (mostly neurotypicals?) just don't see anymore. Also looking at things from unusual angles.
For instance I find that what I photograph and how is typically Autistic (which you can check at https://www.flickr.com/photos/acrostich/?)
@panda @KatyElphinstone @markc568 I wish I could see because I bet I'd find those pictures autistic
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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.
@KatyElphinstone Priors are also key in both monotropism and the free energy principle in reducing the discrepancy between our mental model of the world and the world as we experience it.
The link between these theories was made by Dinah Murray who presented with Damian Milton and Jonathan Green at one of Karl Friston's seminar in 2019.
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@panda @KatyElphinstone @markc568 I wish I could see because I bet I'd find those pictures autistic
@cordova5029 @KatyElphinstone @markc568 Sorry these are not accessible to you. Georges Perec, however has been translated in English. So if that tickles your interest there may be audio versions of some of his books.
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@cordova5029 @KatyElphinstone @markc568 Sorry these are not accessible to you. Georges Perec, however has been translated in English. So if that tickles your interest there may be audio versions of some of his books.
@panda @KatyElphinstone @markc568 oh, I just wondered what sorts of stuff you photoed
I"m guessing you click things like, random cool door handles, neat toilets, cool towels, other random just, things? -
@panda @KatyElphinstone @markc568 oh, I just wondered what sorts of stuff you photoed
I"m guessing you click things like, random cool door handles, neat toilets, cool towels, other random just, things?@cordova5029 @KatyElphinstone @markc568 I did take a pic of a very minimalistic toilet a few months ago. I've taken pics of doors, more of door knockers than handles. Random things such things abandoned or lost, brooms, clouds, etc. Also pics of clouds and close up of things just for the texture or pattern they exhibit (e.g. tree bark). I rarely take pics of people (and the very few I take I usually don't publish).
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@cordova5029 @KatyElphinstone @markc568 I did take a pic of a very minimalistic toilet a few months ago. I've taken pics of doors, more of door knockers than handles. Random things such things abandoned or lost, brooms, clouds, etc. Also pics of clouds and close up of things just for the texture or pattern they exhibit (e.g. tree bark). I rarely take pics of people (and the very few I take I usually don't publish).
@panda @KatyElphinstone @markc568 I'd do the same thing I love that.
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I think masking can go pretty deep. To the point one doesn't even know one's doing it, I guess!
@KatyElphinstone This sort of goes back to that other idea someone posted in #neurodivergent a while back. The idea was that, mathematically speaking, no one is ’neurotypical’. The existence of several neurologically similar individuals is simply not probable.
Yet there’s this idea of a ”normal” person presenting in every day life. On the surface it looks like that’s a real thing.
That likely means most people masking to some extent.
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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.
@KatyElphinstone This line of thinking entirely makes sense to me, and ties in with my idea of #autism being due to the lack of a hardwired #EnvironmentalYoke that constrains neurotypical interests and engagement far more strongly than our interests and engagement are constrained. One of the ways that constraint could be exercised is by the #EnvironmentalYoke imposing far more dogmatic #priors than we have. Beds contain pillows, not ravioli!
