Okay, this train of thought could well be just the product of extreme exhaustion, which I've been suffering the past little while, resulting from insomnia, extra work, the baby, tough business times, and other issues. But, here goes:
I propose that we have a sixth sense. Well, by we, I mean humans, not specifically aspies.
This sixth sense is NOT e.s.p. so don't think i'm going out on some wild superstitious crud.
What this sense is, is a way of "feeling" thoughts and emotions.
It's a physical sensation of our internal observations. Just as the other 5 senses are physical sensations of our external observations.
Now, I think for where I'm going with this, I need to subdivide this sense into emotional sensation and cognitive sensation.
Emotional sensation I believe is most often synesthetic with touch... you get goose bumps when you're scared... you feel your spine tingling... that kind of thing.
Some people take great pleasure from certain types of touch. Others are enthralled by certain sights... some people are driven crazy by a certain smell. Yet others will travel the world looking for new culinary sensations to delight their palate. Many of us also find one type of music or another (or other sound) to be soothing, or uplifting.
But the same can be said for the physical sensations that come from emotion and thought.
Falling in love, the feeling of belonging to a group, looking your child in the eye and seeing an extension of yourself growing there, these are sensations that we can derive pleasure from, just as we can from the classical 5 senses.
Maybe some people experience synetsthetic association with cognitive thought, I myself don't, but yet I can still derive great pleasure from figuring something out that I didn't understand before.
And just like the 5 classical senses there are things that are bad, and that negatively effect us. Being shunned from a group or fingernails scraping a chalkboard, realizing a long held belief is utterly and completely wrong.
We often say "we FEEL disappointed" yes.. we DO feel it, but if we feel it, it must be a sense.. and what physical external stimulus are we "feeling"? it's a different sense, and that's what I'm getting at here.
Okay.. the background is laid here, now onto why this is in this forum instead of PPR or Science.
People feel different senses stronger or weaker than others. And this varies from person to person.
Some people are born (or become) devoid of a given sense, such as blindness, deafness, the other 3 classical sense are less common, but still possible.
My conjecture: Something is wrong with the senses in people with ASDs.
We already know we observe things in the classical sense differently.
But when we view thought and emotion as additional sense(s) it gives us a new perspective on how those things are different in us versus NTs
We tend to be detail oriented, and because emotional sensations are so often synesthetic with touch, do we then over analyze the details of this feeling, thus missing and not understanding the whole which is the emotion?
Because cognition is not as synesthetic, non emotional thought tends to be less problematic with us.
Perhaps the borderline between HFA and LFA lies herein as well. Maybe those with classic or low functioning autism may well have problems experiencing the sensations that come from cognitive thought, and thus be less likely to pursue it.
Perhaps on the other hand, just like certain sounds can irritate us, the same sounds that others find quite acceptable or even enjoyable.... Maybe the same emotions and/or thoughts that most people (NTs) find acceptable or enjoyable are ones that irritate us just as a room full of people all talking at the same time drives most of us bonkers. HFA's only being annoyed by emotion given it's hodge-podge mix of feelings all at once, but unaffected by cognitive sensation because of an ability to narrowly focus to avoid the same hodge podge effect.
Hrm... that's about what i've put together in this idea. Would love to hear what others think of it (expansion, extensions, criticism or just general comments). Sorry it's so wordy, but i'm too tired to shorten it... and I don't think I could without taking away from it.
06 Aug 2010, 11:53 pm
