Sensory processing is how the nervous system receives, organises, and responds to information from the body and the world. For neurodivergent people, this process works differently, with consequences for every aspect of daily life.
This wiki covers eight sensory systems. Each has a dedicated section exploring what the science shows, what differs in autism and intellectual disability, and what it means in practice.
The eight systems
Hearing — the most commonly reported sensory difference. Hyperacusis, the cocktail party problem, misophonia, and enhanced pitch discrimination. Noise is the single most cited environmental barrier.
Vision — enhanced detail perception, fluorescent light sensitivity, visual overload. The brain sees everything; the challenge is filtering.
Touch — the light-touch-versus-deep-pressure distinction, social touch avoidance, clothing sensitivities, and the two neural pathways (discriminative and affective) that explain why a hug can feel threatening and a weighted blanket can feel like safety.
Proprioception — the body’s internal GPS. Force regulation, motor planning, clumsiness, and the calming power of heavy work. The sense most people don’t know they have.
Balance and movement — gravitational insecurity, motion sickness, spinning without dizziness, and why rocking is regulation.
Smell and taste — olfactory overwhelm, selective eating, the oral texture problem, and ARFID. Where sensory processing meets nutrition.
Interoception — the hidden sense. Hunger, pain, heartbeat, temperature, bladder, emotional arousal. When the body’s internal signals are unreliable, self-regulation becomes guesswork.
Overview: the eight-sense taxonomy — how the systems relate to each other, including the Dutch classification used in the prikkelbalans framework.
Cross-cutting themes
Sensory processing is not a collection of separate channels. The systems interact, overlap, and compound. Several pages address these interactions:
- Hypo- en hyperresponsiviteit — how hyper- and hyporesponsivity present across all eight senses, and why the same person can be both
- Positive aspects of hypo- and hyperstimulation — sensory differences as sources of pleasure, focus, and creativity, not just challenge
- Stimming as self-regulation — why repetitive sensory behaviour is neurobiological regulation, not pathology
- Dunn’s four types of sensory processing — the framework (Observer, Seeker, Sensor, Avoider) that maps how different people handle sensory input
- Predictive processing and autism — the theoretical framework that explains why autistic brains weight sensory information differently