Higher-Order Thinking Skills Don’t Define Us

The dining table I hunched under was made from this glossy black plastic that mimicked glass from a distance. As a 7-year-old, I used to sit under it and peer out the sliding glass door while tiny gelatinous raindrops clung on, surrendered, and then nosedived to their fate. It was only a matter of time before the next flash of lightning rolled around so I could smile—then strike an under-the-table pose precisely when my mother “photographed” me.

Connecting with rain.

Source: Viktorya Sergeeva/Pexels

She was dead, by the way—my mother. She passed away from breast cancer when I was 4. This was one of the many ways my developing brain personified her apparent lack of existence.

When there was lightning, there was my mom—photographing.

Fast forward to now. I’m a psychologist in my mid-30s with late-diagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and I am fascinated by the boundless and, frankly, confusing capacities of the human mind.

And in my recent readings, I’ve unveiled two unfortunate characteristics of science: (1) scientists, though rigorously trained, can be hardheaded and closed-minded, and (2) science tends to overemphasize the role of higher-order thinking within the human experience.

Consider consciousness research. Let’s rewind and reinsert ourselves into the dining table scene. For me to undergo my own personal sensory and subjective experience of being under that table looking out the sliding glass door, I would need to at least be somewhat conscious.

On a broader scale, consciousness has been defined as “subjective experience.” It is considered subjective because your experience (e.g., of seeing the color red) is inherently different than my experience, and because no two experiences are the same.

Consciousness research dates back to the late 19th century, and since then, various consciousness theories have been proposed. These theories attempt to explain how it is that living beings can have subjective experience. That is:

How is it that my experience of watching the rain is different from your experience of watching the rain?

Ralph Lewis, M.D., provides a succinct and clear overview of four major consciousness theories in his 2023 blog post. I am not going to discuss each one here, but I want to point out that one of these four consciousness theories (Integrated Information Theory, IIT) blatantly stands out (and has been unfairly bullied in the scientific community because of this). Whereas the other three theories on Lewis’s list emphasize the role of the frontal lobes (particularly the prefrontal cortex, or PFC), IIT proposes that the back of the brain is where the party’s at (aka, where conscious activity originates).

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To critics of IIT, predicting that the seat of consciousness is in the back of the brain is preposterous (as the wise Daffy Duck would say) because, they argue, consciousness requires higher-order thinking skills. To clarify, the PFC (located at the front of the brain) governs executive functioning skills, including the ability to set and accomplish goals, regulate emotions and behavior, and problem-solve or think critically.

Whereas the front of the brain plays a greater role in top-down processing, the back of the brain is more closely related to bottom-up processing.

Top-down processing describes our ability to make sense of the world using information and experiences we’ve already accumulated during our lifetimes. When we engage in a task that requires top-down processing (e.g., a traditional school exam), we are expected to problem-solve and follow specific rules.

Conversely, bottom-up processing involves seeing the world and its workings in a novel, untainted way (“untainted” because we are not seeing the world through a filter of our prior experiences). This is considered a purer, more boundless way of making sense of our sensory input and of interacting with the world.

Children tend to use bottom-up processing more frequently and adeptly than adults, who have accumulated more experiences and corresponding memories and interpretations of how things work.

The Buddhist concept of beginner’s mind, a state of mind that is open, observant, and curious, aligns with the idea that children tend to examine the world from the bottom up.

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Imaginative boy.

Source: Alexander Grey/Pexels

Neuropsychiatrist Daniel Siegel explains that over-relying on top-down processing can be efficient, but also limiting. He writes that “something gets lost with that efficiency” and points to sensory awareness as the main differentiating factor. When people use bottom-up processing, they are using more of their senses to immerse themselves and fully absorb an experience. This is different from top-down processing, wherein sensory information is used much less, and there is much more weight placed on quickly retrieving information that is already stored in memory.

Within the neurodiversity research space, it may be unsurprising to learn that individuals with ADHD perform better on tasks that allow for more flexibility and that have fewer executive functioning demands (with fewer demands on the PFC). For example, high-IQ ADHDers tend to perform well on divergent creativity tasks, which involve bottom-up rather than top-down processing.

Recent research on the ADHD brain suggests ADHDers display overconnectivity in posterior brain regions, including the occipital lobes and areas comprising the default mode network (DMN), which governs stream of consciousness, daydreaming, dreaming, and self-referential thinking (e.g., ruminating about your interactions with others). Therefore, people with ADHD are constantly taking in visual (and other sensory) information, and this can interfere with their ability to focus on a single task in front of them. The strength of having a neurodivergent brain, though, as overcrowded as it may seem, is that we are sensorily attentive.

Remember that Integrated Information Theory says the seat of consciousness is in the back of the brain. A recently published (2025) study tested out this prediction and compared it to one of the three other main consciousness theories (Global Neuronal Workspace Theory), and the findings suggested that IIT’s prediction about the role of the back of the brain in subjective experience held up.

Timely curtsy.

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So here we are with this pariah of a consciousness theory (IIT) that has been persistently criticized and prematurely labeled “pseudoscience”—standing up tall and scientifically supporting itself. If you’re neurodivergent and are reading this, please join me in a smug curtsy.

It turns out that the stuff that defines our subjective experience has less to do with our planning and organizational skills and more to do with sensing, noticing, and simply being.

Who woulda thunk?

Science underestimates the valuable role of sensory, bottom-up processing—the type of processing that neurodivergent individuals excel at, the type of processing that makes us, well—us.

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Maybe if we just took time to notice, to rely more on our senses and instincts, and to open our minds to what we deem “impossible,” maybe then humanity would be more lucid, and science—more innovative.