Openness to Experience: The Gates of the Mind - Scientific American
* People who are "open to experience" tend to be intellectually curious, creative and imaginative. Personality researchers have shown that such people literally see the world differently.
* Less open people experience latent inhibition, a brain function that filters out extraneous visual and cognitive input. But highly open people are less subject to such cognitive inhibition.
* Because their perception allows more information to flow into their visual system, more open people tend to see things that others block out. Researchers also found that open people can feel very complex emotional states because seemingly incompatible feelings break through into their consciousness simultaneously.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/openness-to-experience-the-gates-of-the-mind/ [PDF] Meta-analysis of Big Five personality traits in autism spectrum disorder
The present meta-analysis indicates that ASD is associated with lower openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability
osf.io/m4v56/download (PDF) Sensory processing disorders in children with autism
www.researchgate.net/publication/230794406_Sensory_processing_disorders_in_children_with_autism
New Research on Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) - Psychology Today
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-highly-sensitive-person/201806/new-research-sensory-processing-sensitivity-sps
Emotional Regulation and HSPs - Psychology Today
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-highly-sensitive-person/201811/emotional-regulation-and-hspsAutism / Asperger Syndrome
"Sensory processing problems can cause real pain: even non-verbal individuals with autism can have a problem with sensory overload. Some people are really helped by Irlen Colored Lenses."
- Temple Grandin, Ph.D.
"I know of several children and adults (with Asperger's Syndrome) who have reported a considerable reduction in visual sensitivity and sensory overload when wearing Irlen lenses."
- Tony Attwood, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome
Types of Problems
The Irlen Method is not a cure for Autism or Asperger Syndrome. Not every individual with Autism and Asperger Syndrome suffers with perceptual problems, light sensitivity, and sensory overload. The Irlen Method is a piece of the puzzle for some individuals. Typical problems that can be helped by the Irlen Method are:
(1) Sensory Overload caused by bright lights, fluorescent lights, and sunlight. Lighting is stressful; and this results in behaviors to filter out the light, poor eye contact, and physical symptoms such as anxiety or headaches.
(2) Environmental Distortions where the individual sees the world in a distorted fashion. Objects are blurry, moving, changing, and can disappear. People may look frightening, stairs may look like a slide without steps, and walls and floors may swing and sway. Misperceptions can cause difficulties with sustained attention, eye contact, gross and small motor coordination, ability to interpret facial expressions, and poor social skills.
(3) Print Distortions make learning or reading difficult. The individual may have good or even advanced reading skills but has trouble with reading comprehension or experiences strain and fatigue when reading or doing other activities. Tracking or building breaks into reading may be a problem.
irlen.com/autism-asperger-syndrome-the-irlen-method/(PDF) A psychometric evaluation of the highly sensitive person scale: the components of sensory-processing sensitivity (2018)
ABSTRACT
Objective: Aron and Aron (1997) developed the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (HSPS) to measure individual differences in sensory-processing sensitivity (SPS). Their experiments showed that sensitivity is a one-dimensional construct characterized by high susceptibility to both external (e.g. light, noise) and internal (hunger, pain) stimuli (Aron 2013), later studies which were conducted using the HSPS, disagreed their concept. Further studies of the SPS construct are justified by the following: a Russian version of HSPS questionnaire has not yet been developed; the inner structure of the construct has not yet been conclusively defined (Aron and Aron, 2012), a different method of statistical data analysis may be required; the vast majority of studies, were using small homogeneous groups for sampling. Thus, the purpose of the present study was the psychometric evaluation of the Highly sensitive person scale using Russian data samples.
Method: Two approaches ? active and passive - were employed to collect the field data. The active approach used verbal advertising among undergraduate university students, i.e. the ?snowball method?, whereas the passive approach relied on social media advertisements in Facebook and
VK.com. 860 respondents participated in the study: 350 undergraduate university student volunteers (117 males, 233 females, average age 18.2) and 510 social media users (380 females, 130 males, average age 22.6).
Results: The results of this study did not confirm the one-dimension model of sensitivity suggested in Aron and Aron (1997), nether was the three-factor model suggested by others. The hierarchical cluster and confirmatory analyses employed for the operationalization procedure suggest that sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) can be described in a two-factor model consisting of ?Ease of Excitation? and ?Low Sensory Threshold? subscales. The ?Aesthetic Sensitivity? factor was identified during hierarchical cluster analysis, but showed very low correlation with the other factors ?Ease of Excitation? and ?Low Sensory Threshold?. This result encourages us to look deeper into the conceptual model of HSPS developed in Aron and Aron (1997).
Conclusion: The operationalization of the Russian version of HSPS confirmed that the SPS is multidimensional construct. The precise number of subscales remains open. The term sensitivity has many meanings in modern psychology, a more rigorous definition of the sensitivity construct is required.
www.researchgate.net/publication/329547542_A_psychometric_evaluation_of_the_highly_sensitive_person_scale_the_components_of_sensory-processing_sensitivity(PDF) The functional highly sensitive brain: A review of the brain circuits underlying sensory processing sensitivity and seemingly related disorders
2018
Abstract:
During the past decade, research on the biological basis of sensory processing sensitivity (SPS)-a genetically based trait associated with greater sensitivity and responsivity to environmental and social stimuli-has burgeoned. As researchers try to characterize this trait, it is still unclear how SPS is distinct from seemingly related clinical disorders that have overlapping symptoms, such as sensitivity to the environment and hyper-responsiveness to incoming stimuli. Thus, in this review, we compare the neural regions implicated in SPS with those found in fMRI studies of-Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Schizophrenia (SZ) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to elucidate the neural markers and cardinal features of SPS versus these seemingly related clinical disorders. We propose that SPS is a stable trait that is characterized by greater empathy, awareness, responsivity and depth of processing to salient stimuli. We conclude that SPS is distinct from ASD, SZ and PTSD in that in response to social and emotional stimuli, SPS differentially engages brain regions involved in reward processing, memory, physiological homeostasis, self-other processing, empathy and awareness. We suggest that this serves species survival via deep integration and memory for environmental and social information that may subserve well-being and cooperation. This article is part of the theme issue ?Diverse perspectives on diversity: multi-disciplinary approaches to taxonomies of individual differences
www.researchgate.net/publication/323420482_The_functional_highly_sensitive_brain_A_review_of_the_brain_circuits_underlying_sensory_processing_sensitivity_and_seemingly_related_disorders
