Overview

The world is changing fast, and our understand of it is changing even faster. Psychology and neuroscience are only just beginning to explore the true diversity of human experience, especially with regards to the senses. Sensory differences are studied under the umbrella of neurodivergence, and yet there's increasing evidence everyone may experience the world in profoundly different ways. In the past few years we've found out not everyone mentally visualises, not everyone has an inner monologue, and the very way we think can vary massively depending on a whole spectrum of factors.

The Grand Sensory Survey is an exploratory survey delving into common sensory differences we are only starting to become aware of. It was conducted between September 2018 and June 2019, and consisted of 65 questions split into categorises by sense, as well sections on interoception, general and mental health, and specific known sensory atypicalities.

The survey had 440 total responses, of which 302 were full responses and 138 partials. This page breaks down the findings and trends for the survey, specifically comparing autistic to neurotypical respondents. We were interested to what extent these sensory differences were correlated with autism, and most results have radial bar chart next to them to directly compare this. Hovering over the two bars shows the exact percentages.

These results are broken into the same sections as the survey itself, followed by a summary at the bottom. If you have any questions feel free to contact us as survey@autisticempire.com

Demographics

Mental Health

General Health

Hearing

Sight

Smell

Taste

Touch

Interoception

Sensory Atypicality

Summary

The survey results have demonstrated that there are correlations of varying degrees between autism and several sensory differences. This is very exciting news, and something we hope to encourage follow-up research on. We're hoping to conduct a second, more in-depth survey starting in October 2019. If you'd like to be informed about updates with the survey, you can join the survey mailing list here: https://eepurl.com/dHktIv

The key findings from the survey are:

• Autistic respondents were 3.5x times more likely to have Sensory Processing Disorder (SDP) (76%)
• Autistic respondents were almost twice as likely to have ASMR (43%)
• Autistic respondents were almost 4x more likely to not feel thirst (19%)
• Autistic respondents were over 5x more likely not to feel hunger (18%)
• 9% of autistic respondents do not feel the cold (compared to 0% neurotypical)
• Autistic respondents people 18x more likely to have prosopagnosia (face blindness) (36%)
• Autistic respondents were 4x more likely to have visual snow (32%)
• Autistic respondents were over twice as likely to have tinnitus (40%)
• Autistic respondents were over 10x more likely to have aphantasia (22%)