What is perceptual capacity? + relation to autism + sensory hypersensitivity

Perceptual capacity is the amount of information we can process at a time.

Aristotle presented perception as a possible intelligent form of cognition allowing us to respond in discerning or knowing ways to a variety of situations and do what’s appropriate whilst being aware of why it’s the appropriate thing to do.

Perceptual capacity is a sort of selective capacity that discriminates based on what we’re able to perceive at any given time.

Autistic vs. non-autistic people

Autistic people often have a higher perceptual capacity, allowing them to notice smaller details in addition to, or instead of, the larger picture.

This contributes to having a detail-oriented trait.

A higher perceptual capacity is linked to sensory hypersensitivity, because more information is perceived at a time.

Meanwhile, non-autistic people tend to have an average or lower perceptual capacity and focus more on the bigger picture, or a scene as a whole, instead of finer details.

Load theory of attention

Load theory of attention suggests everyone has a specific perceptual capacity that is always assigned in its entirety. The greater the cognitive load to perform a task, the poorer the selective attention performance. This increases distractibility.

Tasks with low perceptual loads may not require full perceptual capacity to complete the task.

This means smaller details and full attention aren’t as necessary to complete a task.

Other things to note

Autistic people may be more likely to multi-task than their non-autistic peers, even with high perceptual load on the main task at hand.

Increased perceptual capacity may explain various “phenomena” experienced by autistic people, e.g. pattern recognition and heightened pitch processing. Autistic people who experience heightened pitch processing may do so without intelligence or formal musical training.

Due to increased perceptual capacity, autistic individuals may feel the need to engage in more self-regulatory behaviors, such as stimming.

My thoughts on the research

Researching this topic gave me insight to things I hadn’t directly considered about my autistic life experience and a new phrase to use to make sense of, honestly, so many things.

There is a variety of research about how autistic people perceive things differently, but it’s mainly conducted by non-autistic people who viewed our higher perceptual capacity as “abnormality”. It seems that allistic researchers can’t agree 100% on exactly how autistic people experience perception differently.

I wonder if, perhaps, this topic is one of the sources of the idea that autistic people are somehow “super” or having “superpowers”.

While non-autistic researchers do agree that autistic people process more information at a time, they don’t know the extent to which someone has a larger perceptual capacity.

Allistic researchers seem keen to measure autistic people’s perceptual capacity for the sake of comprehending our sensory sensitivities since they affect our daily lives.

One on hand, this sounds cool, but on the other…I’m not into it, because autistic people are not involved in the research from the scientists’ side — and they need to be.

Autistic people NEED more autistic scientists on research teams, because non-autistic researchers with good intentions is NOT enough.

An autistic person on the team would bring up the fact that all humans experience sensory sensitivities to some extent. There are sounds non-autistic people hate, but thy don’t attribute that to being “sensory sensitivities”.

Baron-Cohen

Simon Baron-Cohen research is so harmful to autistic people and the autistic community at large, and yet it’s so frequently mentioned in autism studies.

He doesn’t see autistic people as actual, legitimate people, but as research subjects for science.

I struggle to take studies that mention them seriously, but there are so many that sometimes those studies are all I have to go off. 😒

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🤞 Hopefully one day autistic researchers will have more to say on perceptual capacity as it pertains to autism!

Other posts I wrote about my autistic life experience:

• Autism does define me.
• Autism is a disability.
• Does #ActuallyAutisic exclude self-diagnosed autistics?
• What’s up with the autistic accent?