Neurodivergence and Precision Mismatch

Why different cognitive architectures experience 4E cognition differently---The 4E framework helped cognitive science move beyond deficit models of neurodivergence. If cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended, then different bodies, different environments, different interaction styles, and different tools might simply produce different cognition—not broken cognition, just different.This was progress. The classical cognitivist picture, with its assumption of a universal computational architecture, left little room for cognitive diversity. Either you ran the right program or you didn't. Deviation was error.4E opened space for variation. Different embodiments afford different cognitive possibilities. Different embeddings scaffold different capabilities. Different enactive styles generate different meanings. Different extensions amplify different strengths.But the framework stopped short of explaining the variation. It acknowledged that neurodivergent individuals experience cognition differently. It did not specify how differently, or why, or what determines when different becomes disabling.This article argues that neurodivergence involves systematic differences in coherence geometry—particularly in what we might call precision: how finely the system samples its environment, how much it smooths over variation, how strongly it weights prediction errors. These differences produce distinctive relationships to each of the four Es, distinctive capabilities, and distinctive vulnerabilities.4E provided the domains. It did not provide the parameters that vary across them.---The Limits of "Different Not Deficit"The neurodiversity movement rightly pushed back against pathologizing frameworks. Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodevelopmental conditions are not simply disorders to be cured. They involve genuine differences in cognitive architecture that can produce distinctive capabilities alongside distinctive challenges.4E cognition aligned naturally with this perspective. If there's no single correct way for cognition to be embodied, embedded, enacted, or extended, then neurodivergent cognition isn't wrong—it's differently configured.But "different not deficit" has limits as an explanatory framework.First, it doesn't explain the difference. Saying that autistic cognition is "different" doesn't tell you how it's different, what parameters vary, or what the variation produces. It's a placeholder, not an explanation.Second, it struggles with genuine suffering. Neurodivergent individuals often experience real distress—not because society fails to accommodate them (though it often does), but because their cognitive architecture produces internal difficulties. Sensory overwhelm is not a social construction. Executive dysfunction is not merely a difference in style. Saying "different not deficit" can inadvertently minimize genuine struggles.Third, it can't explain the pattern of capabilities and vulnerabilities. Neurodivergent conditions typically involve both—enhanced abilities in some domains, significant challenges in others. "Different" doesn't capture this structure. Something more specific is happening.What's needed is an account of what differs and how—an account that can explain both the capabilities and the challenges, both the genuine differences and the genuine difficulties.---Precision as a Geometric ParameterOne way to understand neurodivergent variation is through the concept of precision—how finely the cognitive system samples its inputs and how strongly it weights deviations from expectation.In predictive processing terms, precision is the inverse of expected variance. High precision means the system treats small deviations as meaningful signals. Low precision means the system smooths over variation, treating small deviations as noise.This maps onto coherence geometry. Precision affects curvature—how sharply the system responds to perturbation. A high-precision system has higher curvature: small inputs produce larger responses. A low-precision system has lower curvature: it takes more deviation to move the system.Research suggests that autistic cognition involves elevated precision in sensory processing. The system samples more finely, weights deviations more heavily, smooths less aggressively. This single parameter shift produces a cascade of consequences across all four Es.ADHD involves different precision dynamics—not uniformly elevated, but unstable. Precision fluctuates, producing hyperfocus when it spikes and distractibility when it drops. The system can't maintain consistent precision weighting, so coherence across time becomes difficult.Other neurodevelopmental conditions involve other precision profiles. The specifics vary. The structural point is that precision is a parameter that can vary, and its variation produces systematic differences in how cognition manifests across embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended domains.---High Precision and EmbodimentEmbodied cognition emphasizes that physiology shapes thought. For high-precision systems, this produces distinctive patterns.Sensory intensity. High precision means sensory signals are sampled more finely and weighted more heavily. The same physical stimulus produces a stronger internal response. Light that seems normal to others is too bright. Sound that seems quiet is too loud. Textures that seem neutral are unbearable. This is not "sensitivity" as emotional reactivity—it's a parameter setting in sensory processing.Interoceptive differences. The same elevated precision applies to internal body signals. Some high-precision individuals experience intense interoceptive awareness—every heartbeat, every digestive gurgle, every muscle tension registers strongly. Others, paradoxically, seem interoceptively blunted—perhaps because the signal is so overwhelming that the system dampens it defensively.Sensory-motor precision. Fine motor control may be enhanced in some domains (detailed handwork, precise movements) while gross motor coordination suffers (clumsiness, poor proprioception). The system excels at high-precision tasks and struggles with tasks requiring smooth, low-precision integration.Embodied overwhelm. When sensory precision is high, embodiment can overwhelm. The body becomes too loud. Environments that others navigate easily become physiologically intolerable. This isn't psychological—it's a consequence of how the system samples and weights sensory information.4E says cognition is embodied. It doesn't say that embodiment can be calibrated at different precision levels, producing systematically different experiences of having a body.---High Precision and EmbeddingEmbedded cognition emphasizes environmental scaffolding. For high-precision systems, environments behave differently.Pattern detection. High precision means detecting patterns that lower-precision systems smooth over. The slightly crooked picture. The faint hum from the fluorescent light. The subtle inconsistency in someone's behavior. High-precision systems notice what others miss—not because they're trying harder, but because their sampling resolution is higher.Environmental intolerance. The same precision that enables pattern detection produces environmental intolerance. Environments are full of small deviations, minor inconsistencies, low-level noise. Low-precision systems filter these out automatically. High-precision systems register all of it. The result is environments that feel chaotic, overwhelming, unbearable—even when others find them perfectly comfortable.Fit specificity. High-precision systems often find that only very specific environments work. Not just "quiet" but a particular quality of quiet. Not just "organized" but a particular type of organization. The margin for environmental mismatch is smaller because the system registers mismatches that others don't notice.Embedding as exhaustion. For neurotypical cognition, environmental embedding is largely effortless—the scaffolding works invisibly. For high-precision cognition, embedding is work. The system must constantly process environmental input that others filter automatically. Simply being in a typical environment can be exhausting, not because of activity but because of processing load.4E says cognition is embedded. It doesn't say that embedding imposes different loads on systems with different precision parameters.---High Precision and EnactionEnactive cognition emphasizes sense-making through interaction. For high-precision systems, sense-making follows different patterns.Deep pattern extraction. High-precision systems often excel at extracting structural patterns from complex domains. They notice the regularities, the symmetries, the underlying logic. Mathematics, music, systems, code—domains with discoverable deep structure reward high-precision engagement.Frozen meaning. But high precision can also produce rigidity. Once a pattern is extracted, the system may resist revision. New information that would update a low-precision system's understanding might be rejected by a high-precision system as noise. Meaning can freeze rather than flow.Social sense-making challenges. Social interaction involves high ambiguity, rapid context-shifting, and tolerance for contradiction. Low-precision systems handle this by smoothing—accepting approximate understanding, tolerating inconsistency, updating fluidly. High-precision systems may struggle because social signals are noisy and don't resolve into clean patterns.The double empathy problem. Neurodivergent individuals are often described as lacking social understanding. But research shows the difficulty is bidirectional—neurotypical individuals are equally poor at reading neurodivergent individuals. This suggests not deficit but mismatch: different precision settings produce different enacted meanings, and cross-precision communication is hard for both sides.4E says cognition is enacted through interaction. It doesn't say that different precision settings produce different sense-making patterns—some more effective in structured domains, others in ambiguous ones.---Precision and ExtensionExtended cognition emphasizes cognitive scaffolding through tools and others. For high-precision systems, extension works differently.Tool affinity. High-precision systems often have strong relationships with specific tools. The right tool, configured exactly right, becomes a powerful extension. But tool requirements are exacting. A slightly different interface, a small change in function, can make a previously useful tool unusable.Extension as translation layer. For many neurodivergent individuals, external tools serve as translation layers between their internal cognition and a world designed for different precision settings. Calendars externalize time sense. Lists externalize sequence. Social scripts externalize interaction patterns. These aren't just helpful—they're necessary interfaces.Relational extension challenges. Extension to other people is complicated by precision mismatch. Others may not provide the right kind of scaffolding. Their timing may be wrong. Their communication may be too ambiguous. What works as extension for a neurotypical system may not work at all for a high-precision system—and vice versa.AI as precision-matched extension. Notably, many neurodivergent individuals report that AI systems make effective cognitive extensions. AI can be consistent, explicit, patient, and adjustable. It doesn't require real-time social navigation. It can match precision requirements in ways that human interaction often can't.4E says cognition extends beyond the individual. It doesn't say that extension effectiveness depends on precision matching between the system and its extensions.---ADHD: Unstable PrecisionIf autism involves elevated but stable precision, ADHD involves unstable precision—a system that can't maintain consistent precision weighting across time and context.Hyperfocus as precision spike. When something captures attention, precision spikes. The system samples intensely, weights heavily, excludes everything else. This produces the remarkable focus that ADHD individuals can bring to engaging tasks—a focus often more intense than neurotypical attention.Distractibility as precision collapse. When precision drops, everything competes equally for attention. No signal is weighted more than any other. The system can't privilege task-relevant information because it's not weighting anything consistently. This is distractibility—not as choice or willpower failure, but as a precision regulation failure.Time blindness as coupling failure. Stable time perception requires consistent precision across temporal scales—integrating moments into minutes into hours. When precision fluctuates, this integration fails. Time becomes unreliable. An hour passes in what felt like minutes. A week dissolves. The coupling between timescales that normally produces coherent temporal experience breaks.Context-dependence. ADHD function is famously context-dependent. The same person who can't focus on routine tasks may focus intensely on novel or high-stakes situations. This makes sense if external context affects precision regulation. Novelty and urgency may temporarily stabilize precision, producing function that isn't available otherwise.Medication effects. Stimulant medications help many ADHD individuals by stabilizing precision—not increasing focus directly, but providing the neurochemical conditions for consistent precision weighting. This explains the paradox of stimulants calming rather than activating: they're not adding energy, they're adding stability.4E describes distributed cognition. It doesn't describe how precision instability produces distributed dysfunction—how each E becomes unreliable when precision can't be maintained.---The Capability-Vulnerability StructurePrecision variation doesn't just produce differences—it produces a specific structure of capabilities and vulnerabilities that deficit models couldn't explain.High precision produces:Capabilities:Fine-grained pattern detectionDeep structural analysisDetailed memoryConsistency and reliability in stable domainsError and anomaly detectionResistance to groupthink and social conformityVulnerabilities:Sensory overwhelmEnvironmental intoleranceDifficulty with ambiguityRigidity when patterns don't fitSocial navigation challengesExhaustion from processing loadUnstable precision produces:Capabilities:Intense focus when engagedNovel connections and creativityHigh-energy engagement with interesting problemsCrisis performanceBreadth of interest and explorationVulnerabilities:Inconsistent functionTime management difficultiesTask completion problemsDifficulty with routineUnreliable follow-throughThese patterns aren't random. They're the predictable consequences of precision as a parameter. High precision helps in high-structure domains and hurts in high-noise domains. Unstable precision helps when precision happens to be appropriate and hurts when it's not.4E can describe neurodivergent cognition as "different." Precision explains how it's different—what varies, what that variation produces, and why capabilities and vulnerabilities cluster as they do.---Environment Fit as Precision MatchingThe social model of disability emphasizes that disability results from environment mismatch, not individual deficit. A wheelchair user is disabled by stairs, not by their legs.For neurodivergent cognition, this insight is partly right and needs specification. The mismatch is precision mismatch.Typical environments are designed for typical precision ranges. Lighting, noise levels, social expectations, communication norms, time structures—all assume a particular range of precision settings. When your settings are outside that range, the environment doesn't work.Sensory environments. Office lighting, HVAC noise, open floor plans, shared spaces—these work for low-precision systems that filter effortlessly. They overwhelm high-precision systems that register everything.Social environments. Implicit communication, rapid context-switching, tolerance for ambiguity, real-time social navigation—these work for systems that smooth over uncertainty. They fail for systems that need explicit information and stable patterns.Temporal environments. Fixed schedules, arbitrary deadlines, consistent routines—these work for systems with stable time coupling. They fail for systems whose precision fluctuates.Cognitive environments. Multitasking expectations, interrupted workflows, variable task types—these work for systems that adapt fluidly. They fail for systems that need deep, uninterrupted engagement.The prescription follows: accommodation isn't about being nice to neurodivergent people. It's about precision matching—creating environments where different precision settings can function effectively.This reframes the social model in structural terms. The problem is real, but it's not just "society should accommodate." It's that environments have implicit precision assumptions, and when those assumptions don't match, cognition fails—not because of individual deficit, but because of parameter mismatch.---Neurodivergence as Coherence SensingHere's the reframe that 4E alone couldn't provide:High-precision cognitive systems are coherence sensors. They detect deviations, inconsistencies, and mismatches that low-precision systems smooth over. They notice when patterns break, when things don't fit, when coherence is failing.In stable, well-structured environments, this sensitivity is costly. There's little signal to detect, and the precision system wastes energy processing noise that could safely be ignored.In complex, unstable, or structurally fragile environments, this sensitivity is essential. The high-precision system detects instability before low-precision systems notice anything wrong. It provides early warning. It sees structural problems that smoothing would conceal.This explains why neurodivergence persists evolutionarily. In stable conditions, low precision is more efficient—smooth over the noise, conserve energy, go with the flow. In unstable conditions, high precision is essential—detect the threat, notice the change, see the pattern breaking.Populations benefit from variance. Having some individuals at different precision settings provides detection capabilities that uniform precision would miss.Neurodivergent cognition is not deficit. It is precision variance.Different precision settings produce different relationships to embodiment, embedding, enaction, and extension. They produce different capabilities and different vulnerabilities. They produce genuine advantages in some conditions and genuine difficulties in others.4E provided the domains across which this variance manifests. Precision variance explains what actually varies.---The Stability Condition, AgainThis brings us back to the series' central argument. 4E describes distributed cognition. It doesn't provide the parameters that govern whether distributed cognition works or fails.Precision is one such parameter. It affects curvature—how strongly the system responds to perturbation. Different precision settings produce different coherence geometries, different manifold shapes, different patterns of stability and instability.But precision alone doesn't complete the picture. You also need:Dimensionality: How many degrees of freedom the system maintainsTopology: Which structures persist across perturbationCoupling: How different timescales and levels integrateNeurodivergent conditions involve characteristic patterns across all these dimensions:Autism: High precision, potentially reduced dimensionality in some domains, strong topological persistence (rigidity), variable couplingADHD: Unstable precision, high dimensionality (many interests), weak topological persistence (can't maintain structures), poor coupling (time blindness)These are geometric profiles, not labels. They describe the shape of coherence in different cognitive architectures.4E can say that cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted, extended. It cannot say that coherence geometry varies, that this variation is systematic, and that different geometries produce predictable patterns of capability and vulnerability.The stability condition that 4E lacks would include these parameters. It would specify not just that cognition is distributed, but what shapes that distribution can take and what each shape produces.---ImplicationsIf neurodivergence is precision variance, several things follow:Assessment should map geometry, not deficits. What's the precision profile? The dimensional range? The topological persistence? The coupling stability? These questions provide structural understanding that diagnostic categories don't.Intervention should target fit, not normalization. The goal isn't to make high-precision systems low-precision. It's to find environments, tools, and practices that work for different precision settings. Accommodation is precision matching.Strengths are real and structural. The capabilities associated with different precision settings aren't consolation prizes—they're predictable consequences of geometric parameters. High-precision systems really do detect things low-precision systems miss. Unstable precision really does produce creative connections.Suffering is also real and structural. The challenges aren't just social construction. Sensory overwhelm, executive dysfunction, social navigation difficulty—these are real consequences of geometric parameters, not just failures of accommodation. Both the strengths and the struggles are structural.Mixed teams outperform uniform teams. In complex environments, having different precision settings in the group provides detection capabilities that no uniform setting could match. The high-precision member notices what the smoothers miss. The smoothers maintain function when the high-precision member is overwhelmed. Cognitive diversity is functional, not just fair.---Conclusion4E cognition provided a framework that could, in principle, accommodate neurodivergent variation. If cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended, different configurations of these dimensions might simply produce different cognition.But 4E stopped at "different." It didn't specify what differs, how, or why.Precision—how finely the system samples its environment and how strongly it weights deviations—provides part of the answer. Different precision settings produce systematically different experiences across all four Es. They produce predictable patterns of capability and vulnerability. They explain why accommodation is precision matching and why cognitive diversity is functional advantage.But precision is just one parameter. The full picture requires the other geometric dimensions: curvature (which precision affects), dimensionality, topology, and coupling. Together, these form a coherence profile—a description of the shape of cognition that explains how it will behave across different conditions.4E describes where cognition happens. Coherence geometry describes what shape it takes.Neurodivergence reveals that shape can vary. And variation in shape produces not deficit, not mere difference, but structured patterns of capability and challenge that uniform frameworks couldn't predict.---Next week: Part 9—Language, Narrative, and the Limits of Sense-Making---Series NavigationThis is Part 8 of a 10-part series reviewing 4E cognition and its structural limits.4E Cognition Under Strain (Series Introduction)Why Cognition Escaped the SkullEmbodied Cognition and the Missing Stability ConditionEmbedded Cognition and Environmental FragilityEnaction, Sense-Making, and the Problem of CollapseExtended Cognition and the Scaling Problem4E and Trauma: The Unspoken Failure CaseAttachment as a 4E SystemNeurodivergence and Precision Mismatch ← you are hereLanguage, Narrative, and the Limits of Sense-MakingWhy Coherence Becomes Inevitable