The Sensory Diversity Framework (SDF): A Synthesis and Predictive Model of Sensory Differences

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Abstract

Special populations with sensory differences demonstrate the remarkable diversity of the human mind. Sensory differences take many forms, from misophonia (a sound sensitivity disorder), to ASMR (relaxing sensory pleasure from sounds like tapping), to synaesthesia (a type of ‘merging of the senses’), to sensory hyposensitivity (sensory underwhelm or under-responsiveness), as well as a range of other atypical sensory experiences, involving sounds, colours, textures, odours, tastes, and so on. This paper presents the first far-reaching model of sensory differences, by treating them not as mysterious lone conditions, but within a coherent over-arching framework with testable predictions. Our model has three dimensions to predict the range and diversity of sensory variation: valence describes whether the sensory difference is an aversion or predilection, trigger describes whether differences relate to the intensity or identity of a stimulus, and sense domain includes, minimally, vision, audition, gustation, olfaction, touch, proprioception, interoception, and the vestibular sense. We supplement our proposal with a literature review to map out known manifestations of sensory differences falling within our model’s multi-dimensional search-space. These initial steps serve to predict, in a Mendeleevian fashion, where novel types of sensory differences might be found in the future (i.e., by revealing gaps in the definable search-space, which represent sensory differences that are predicted but as-yet-unknown). Finally, we test our model by identifying one such gap and showing that the novel sensory difference it predicts does indeed exist. In sum, we present the first unified model of sensory differences, offering predictive capabilities to tackle fundamental questions about the sensory structure of the human mind.

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