I have described “spiky”, as imagine a sound board, with those up and down sliding switches. Most people have all of their switches close to the middle of the scale, just some a bit higher, and some a bit lower. But autistic people tend to have many of those switches turned either fully up, or fully down, and of course completely randomly as well.
Interestingly, this can also describe our sensory experiences/sensory filters. Some of us have brains that filter out speech, to the point that we don’t hear our own names being called. Others (like myself) have so little filter for speech sounds that we can’t even hear our own thoughts if someone else is talking in the same room. Or we may not experience pain from something that would cause an NT pain, but things that NTs experience as pleasurable might be painful to us. (For me, that’s tickling. I can’t stand being tickled. Or ASMR, it makes me irrationally angry.)
I have described “spiky”, as imagine a sound board, with those up and down sliding switches. Most people have all of their switches close to the middle of the scale, just some a bit higher, and some a bit lower. But autistic people tend to have many of those switches turned either fully up, or fully down, and of course completely randomly as well.
Interestingly, this can also describe our sensory experiences/sensory filters. Some of us have brains that filter out speech, to the point that we don’t hear our own names being called. Others (like myself) have so little filter for speech sounds that we can’t even hear our own thoughts if someone else is talking in the same room. Or we may not experience pain from something that would cause an NT pain, but things that NTs experience as pleasurable might be painful to us. (For me, that’s tickling. I can’t stand being tickled. Or ASMR, it makes me irrationally angry.)