Autism: Intense World Syndrome

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As I do not have classical moderate or lower functioning autism, I can't proclaim to know what goes on in the minds of such people, more than anyone else.

It's true that I did have hypersensitivity as a child, and to some degree as an adult. It's true that I have processing issues which causes me to think excessively, but though I am not completely mind blind, these issues dampen my ability to interpret certain aspects of social situations quick enough to formulate what I would consider to be the most optimal responses to them. It's true that, when I was younger, I had many mannerism that those familiar with autistic children, considered to be autistic.

But to be quite honest, I'm skeptical that LFA/MFA is just an amplification of my own traits, and I don't think the way in which these people perceive the world can be summed up in one simple theory.

I think it's going to be a little different for everyone, and the outward symptoms only present in very similar fashions.

One study I came across found that autistic children process speech slower than NT children. Perhaps in some instances a non-verbal autistic individual can understand a significant amount of spoken language, and might even be able to speak, but do not..perhaps because it is such a stressful thing, or something unfamiliar to them, however I would think they are in the minority. I think a good number do have some issue where they can understand spoken language but can't use it themselves, and others may have some type of semantic pragmatic issue or other processing issue that really does make it difficult to understand and use spoken language.

And yet others may really have no concept that the people around them are trying to communicate with them.

I have a friend who was lower/moderate functioning when he was younger, and non-verbal until he was almost 12 and speaks fluently now, and when I asked why he didn't speak when he was younger, he couldn't give me an answer simply because he couldn't remember that he didn't. I derived from this that he has memory issues, however I don't believe they are due to a poor memory alone, but the way he perceives sequences of events, and assigns context to them. Or, it also might be that at that point in his life, he had little in the way of self awareness.

I have to say that the quote in the initial post describes my POV very well. I tend to feel select things incredibly intensely, not necessarily particular sensory cues but various, sometimes quite disconnected parts of sensory experiences which I do tend to over-process and focus on.

Yep, the empathy thing is distorted to the max

Now with the "intense world", it seems again, more of the consequences than the cause. I could say:
- Distortion of the reward system of the brain (that rule some things as important and some other as ignored)
- Different memory efficiency
- Consciousness alteration
[...]
And all this could sound like something genuinely correct. What I suppose is that we have a couple of primordial firing sequences that are set as highways in the very beginning of the development of the brain. In one of this highway there must be one original difference, and I suppose it can be only a difference in the order, in the sequence of processing things.

Given the massive differences between people here: not the same age, not the same culture, not the same language, not the same race, not the same climate, not the same sight, not the same life... how could we understand each other so well?

I don't think we are smarter, or better. But our difference give us the ability to see the world in a very high contrast between what we do and what people expect us to do very early. And this is precisely what gives us a chance to be better.