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.
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.