Souta Hidaka, Professor
Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Psychology

【Abstract】
As individuals, each of us have different perceptual and cognitive processes and mechanisms. Some of these can be experienced in our daily lives, such as the way we perceive colors differently to other people or differences in the extent to which we are bothered by noises. Idiosyncratic sensory sensitivity is one of the criteria for diagnosing autism spectrum disorder, a developmental disorder, but as the term “spectrum” suggests, everybody is considered to possess these kinds of sensitivity differences. Also, our sensory organs decline with age, making it more difficult to see and hear. It is thought that the older people compensate for this decline by combining multiple types of sensory information. Our research treats tendencies related to developmental disorders and aging as individual variation and investigates the perceptual and cognitive processes and mechanisms behind this variation using a relatively large data set.
【Future prospects】
By clarifying the perceptual and cognitive processes and mechanisms that are and are not specific to tendencies related to developmental disorders and aging, we can understand the individual differences in perceptual and cognitive information processing. Based on this understanding, we will be able to recommend more comfortable lifestyles by mitigating idiosyncratic traits, such as encouraging individuals who tend to be excessively sensitive to sound to wear headphones, earbuds, or earplugs.