That wasn't quite my meaning. I was speculating about the causes of what seems to be a universal feeling about eye contact. It is intense. Some people on the spectrum, given that they might have trouble integrating sensory information, find intense sensory stimulation like eye contact...
I think I see what you're driving at--I've read some of your earlier posts (including the post where you made clear that you don't want this hypothesis exposed before it's confirmed/disconfirmed anecdotally). It reminds me of the "ape etiquette" one of my ethologist friends talks about. Never...
True, I don't think that occurs often in lab settings--with tests. I was just thinking of people I knew who talked about their synesthesia at parties. Anecdotal. I wouldn't assume that someone who described his/her synesthesia soberly and specifically (like, looking over the thread, waht did)...
Oops.
On the plus side, nowhere to go from here but up, right?
Even if the analogy becomes diabetes:pancreas::autism/asperger's:brain, I think the broader argument (or impression, really) still stands. Or emphysema:lungs or whatever.
I hope, through this discussion, that we keep three things in mind:
1) Real synesthesia is quite rare.
2) Out of all neurological/perceptual phenomena, this one is by FAR the most commonly faked. Good attention-getter; makes people feel special.
2b) Everybody is a synesthesiac to...
Indeed. It's remarkable to what extent scientific fluency within a given subfield depends on reasoning about scientists' agendas and recognizing their tribal affiliations.
However, you should distinguish between cognitive and neural modularists. Cognitive modularists see modules at the...