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In Ayaya’s telling, her autism involves a host of perceptual disconnects. For example, she feels in exquisite detail all the sensations that typical people read

In Ayaya’s telling, her autism involves a host of perceptual disconnects. For example, she feels in exquisite detail all the sensations that typical people readily identify as hunger, but she can’t piece them together. “It’s very hard for me to conclude I’m hungry,” she says. “I feel irritated, or I feel sad, or I feel something [is] wrong. This information is separated, not connected.” It takes her so long to realize she is hungry that she often feels faint and gets something to eat only after someone suggests it to her. This sounds more like a failure to integrate sensory information than a predictive error. That also fits with existing theories of autism relating to sensory processing.

s_m_t 9y ago
Isn't that sort of the same thing? To what end does one integrate sensory information other than to make predictions or classify things?
- lactau 9y ago
  "Making predictions" sounds too broad. Everything humans do is basically pattern matching and prediction making.
- Erlangolem 9y ago
  The idea that there is a conflict of prediction vs. reality, and a simple failure to connect disparate sensations into a whole are nothing alike. The former is a characteristic of something like motion or VR sickness; your body expects one thing, but receives conflicting information. Integration failure doesn’t require prediction, just different sensations not creating a whole impression. The author describes experiencing hunger as a bunch of disconnected sensations, that don’t add up to one thing. She feels pain in her stomach, irritability, tiredness, but doesn’t integrate that into “I’m hungry” and just experiences them as different incidental feelings indicative of nothing in particular.
- c3534l 9y ago
  It's the difference between knowing you're hungry and knowing you will be hungry. I can tell you that if I drive a car far enough it will eventually run out of gas, so I should probably go to the gas station before a big trip. But that's a very different problem from having a gas gauge that's broken entirely.
gt_ 9y ago
Speaking from personal experience with the exact conundrum described in the quote, I could not agree with your comment more.
zukzuk 9y ago
There's a medical term for this — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia. Alexithymia can overlap with ASD, but it can certainly occur in individuals who do not otherwise meet diagnostic criteria for ASD.
- bitcoinboi9 9y ago
  It's quite a different thing. Sensory information like the limits of your body, vision and sound input. http://carlysvoice.com/home/aboutcarly/ http://carlysvoice.com/home/aboutcarly/ I believe the woman above described that she does not feel the limits of her body and needs constant jerking and slamming of the body parts on the walls to find comfort.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  When I'm using ADD meds, I have to set a clock or I forget to eat, because I don't feel hunger. I feel every other symptom surrounding hunger, like becoming light-headed due to low blood sugar, or getting more sluggish when working out problems. However, it all happens without feeling a desire to eat (which is what hunger is, no?) I have to make a rational decision to act on the signals and put nutrients in my stomach. And I chose that description for a reason: once I do eat, I taste the food just like I normally would, but it doesn't trigger any emotional response. The satisfaction of eating something tasty, or filling up an empty stomach is absent. To be clear: the medication does not make me a robot, I still feel emotions in general at this stage and I do expect them to be there. Normally, not enjoying food that you like is basically the body's signal that you've eaten enough, just before feeling nauseous due to overeating. Except that I'm starving. So eating a meal is like forcing food down my throat. It also means that I have to guestimate the proper meal size, because the normal cues for having had enough food are absent. My emotional workaround is focusing on the the fact that after eating, I will have energy again. So I try to find emotional joy in anticipating the consequence of eating a healthy meal rather than the taste of the meal itself. Is that the same phenomenon, or something different?
  - ClassyJacket 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, can I ask which ADD meds you use? I find Dexedrine incredibly useful, and I expected it to lower hunger as a side effect, but didn't really find it did anything in that regard.
taberiand 9y ago
This sounds like she needs to set up an eating schedule.

s_m_t 9y ago

Isn't that sort of the same thing? To what end does one integrate sensory information other than to make predictions or classify things?

lactau 9y ago
"Making predictions" sounds too broad. Everything humans do is basically pattern matching and prediction making.
Erlangolem 9y ago
The idea that there is a conflict of prediction vs. reality, and a simple failure to connect disparate sensations into a whole are nothing alike. The former is a characteristic of something like motion or VR sickness; your body expects one thing, but receives conflicting information. Integration failure doesn’t require prediction, just different sensations not creating a whole impression. The author describes experiencing hunger as a bunch of disconnected sensations, that don’t add up to one thing. She feels pain in her stomach, irritability, tiredness, but doesn’t integrate that into “I’m hungry” and just experiences them as different incidental feelings indicative of nothing in particular.
c3534l 9y ago
It's the difference between knowing you're hungry and knowing you will be hungry. I can tell you that if I drive a car far enough it will eventually run out of gas, so I should probably go to the gas station before a big trip. But that's a very different problem from having a gas gauge that's broken entirely.

gt_ 9y ago

Speaking from personal experience with the exact conundrum described in the quote, I could not agree with your comment more.

zukzuk 9y ago

There's a medical term for this — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia. Alexithymia can overlap with ASD, but it can certainly occur in individuals who do not otherwise meet diagnostic criteria for ASD.

bitcoinboi9 9y ago
It's quite a different thing. Sensory information like the limits of your body, vision and sound input. http://carlysvoice.com/home/aboutcarly/ http://carlysvoice.com/home/aboutcarly/ I believe the woman above described that she does not feel the limits of her body and needs constant jerking and slamming of the body parts on the walls to find comfort.
vanderZwan 9y ago
When I'm using ADD meds, I have to set a clock or I forget to eat, because I don't feel hunger. I feel every other symptom surrounding hunger, like becoming light-headed due to low blood sugar, or getting more sluggish when working out problems. However, it all happens without feeling a desire to eat (which is what hunger is, no?) I have to make a rational decision to act on the signals and put nutrients in my stomach. And I chose that description for a reason: once I do eat, I taste the food just like I normally would, but it doesn't trigger any emotional response. The satisfaction of eating something tasty, or filling up an empty stomach is absent. To be clear: the medication does not make me a robot, I still feel emotions in general at this stage and I do expect them to be there. Normally, not enjoying food that you like is basically the body's signal that you've eaten enough, just before feeling nauseous due to overeating. Except that I'm starving. So eating a meal is like forcing food down my throat. It also means that I have to guestimate the proper meal size, because the normal cues for having had enough food are absent. My emotional workaround is focusing on the the fact that after eating, I will have energy again. So I try to find emotional joy in anticipating the consequence of eating a healthy meal rather than the taste of the meal itself. Is that the same phenomenon, or something different?
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, can I ask which ADD meds you use? I find Dexedrine incredibly useful, and I expected it to lower hunger as a side effect, but didn't really find it did anything in that regard.

taberiand 9y ago

This sounds like she needs to set up an eating schedule.