These can include extreme sensitivity to change and sensory stimuli, as well as an intense focus on details. For instance, many children and adults on the spectrum are extremely sensitive to not just flavor, but also the color, smell and texture of foods.
A common trait among people with autism is their heightened sensitivity to smell, sound and taste. Caused due to mutated genes, people with autism find it difficult to process social stimuli – an event that evokes a functional reaction in the human brain and is responsible for integrating sensory information.
Many people with autism have difficulty processing everyday sensory information. They can be either hyper sensitive (over-reactive) or hypo sensitive (under-reactive) to sensory input, or experience fragmented or distorted perceptions. A person's responses to sensory experiences may fluctuate from one day to the next.
Autistic people may experience sensory differences. If you are autistic, you may be over-sensitive or under-sensitive to specific sights, sounds, smells or textures. This can be a positive thing, but can also cause distress or discomfort.
It would be wrong to suggest that all individuals with autism have an aversion to touch – some may enjoy it outright, and others may enjoy it in certain contexts or forms, such as a preference for deep pressure versus light brushing.
Autistic people may act in a different way to other people
find it hard to understand how other people think or feel. find things like bright lights or loud noises overwhelming, stressful or uncomfortable. get anxious or upset about unfamiliar situations and social events. take longer to understand information.
Some autistic people have: problems with reading, writing and spelling (dyslexia) clumsy movements and problems with organisation and following instructions (developmental co-ordination disorder, or dyspraxia)
Children with autism are often clumsy, physically awkward or uncoordinated.
Furthermore, participants' preferred soft and comfortable textures, like satin; previous research also reporting that autistic individuals enjoy touching soft and smooth textures (Cascio et al., 2012).
Autistic people may experience heat, cold and pain differently. Taste Some autistic people have very limited diets, due to having particular preference for certain textures and bland food. Others may seek out strong flavours like spicy food (these people are under-sensitive to taste).
Taste preference and autistic traits
Participants liked bitter taste less than the other four tastes (Tukey's Honestly significant difference (HSD), ps < 0.001), and liked sour less than sweet and umami tastes (Tukey's HSD, ps < 0.001).
We call this hypo- or hyper-responsiveness, and it can include a person's response to flavors and food textures. Naturally, a blast of sweetness provides a powerful sensory input that many of us crave. This craving can be particularly powerful for an individual affected by autism.
While many children with autism feel averse to hugging, some children with autism like to be hugged. Some children can swing the opposite way and want so many hugs that they feel hug deprived when they aren't getting enough.
Some believe that autistic people aren't interested in romantic relationships or aren't capable of romantic love. However, this is far from the truth. In fact, autistic people can make wonderful partners.
Individuals with autism also show equal or superior abilities in pitch processing, labeling emotions in music, and musical preference compared to typically developing peers.
Consistent with the generalized slowing hypothesis, autistic individuals 1 have been observed to exhibit longer mean reaction/response times (RTs) across a range of tasks as compared to age-matched neurotypical individuals (Haigh et al., 2018; Roberts et al., 2011), as well as less automaticity in processing complex ...
If you have a picky eater with autism, know that you're not alone. A recent review of scientific studies found that children with autism are five times more likely to have mealtime challenges such as extremely narrow food selections, ritualistic eating behaviors (e.g. no foods can touch) and meal-related tantrums.
Non-autistic people tend to assess concepts before details, also known as top-down thinking. Autistic people take the opposite approach with bottom-up thinking and use details to build concepts. It may take longer to filter out sensory details with this approach, but you're less likely to miss important information.
Research suggests autistic people are more prone to experiencing anxiety and estimates that up to half of all autistic people experience high levels of anxiety on a regular basis. If you or someone you know is struggling with high levels of anxiety, there is support and help available.
About 70% of autistic people have an intellectual disability, which means they have an IQ lower than 70. The remaining 30% have intelligence that ranges from average to gifted.
People with autism spectrum disorder are sometimes described as lacking empathy (the ability to feel along with others) and/or sympathy (the ability to feel for others). While this is a persistent stereotype of all people with autism, these challenges are not experienced by everyone on the spectrum.
Therefore, it appears that while some individuals may be aware they are autistic, others may not fully understand why they have difficulties connecting with people socially or engaging in conversation - yet still realize they are 'different.
Advances in diagnostic capabilities and greater understanding and awareness of autism spectrum disorder seem to be largely driving the increase, the Rutgers researchers said. But there's probably more to the story: Genetic factors, and perhaps some environmental ones, too, might also be contributing to the trend.
A new study has examined the pain perception among people with autism and found that they experience pain at a higher intensity than the general population and are less adaptable to the sensation. This finding is contrary to the prevalent belief that people with autism are supposedly 'indifferent to pain'.