Why One Size Fits No One: Neurodivergent Sensory Profiles and the Case for User Control

The Well-Meaning Trap

A parent reads that brown noise helps children with ADHD focus. She turns it on for her son. He covers his ears.

A different parent reads that minimal stimulation is best for autism. She removes all ambient sound from her daughter’s study space. Her daughter cannot sit still.

Same category of diagnosis. Opposite sensory needs. This is not a bug in the research. It is the central finding.

The science of sensory processing in neurodivergent children reveals something that one-size-fits-all products cannot accommodate: two children with the same diagnosis can have radically different sensory profiles. The same child can have different needs on different days. And the only reliable way to get it right is to hand control to the user.

Dunn’s Four Quadrants: A Framework for Sensory Difference

In the 1990s, occupational therapist Winnie Dunn proposed a model that changed how clinicians understand sensory processing. Her framework maps sensory behavior along two axes: neurological threshold (how much input the nervous system needs before it responds) and behavioral response (whether the person actively seeks or passively endures that input).

The intersection of these two axes produces four quadrants.

Here is what makes this model powerful: a single child can occupy different quadrants for different senses. A child who is visually seeking – drawn to bright colors, moving objects, screen animations – can simultaneously be auditory avoiding – distressed by background noise, sudden sounds, or voices at normal volume. The quadrants are not personality types. They are per-modality processing patterns.

This means that any tool claiming to optimize a child’s sensory environment must account for at least four independent dimensions of sensory processing. A single “focus mode” cannot do this. A single noise setting cannot do this. Only user control can do this.

ADHD: More of Everything

The intuition is that ADHD children are sensory seekers – they need more input, more stimulation, more noise. The research says something more complicated and more important.

Read that again. ADHD children are simultaneously more seeking AND more avoiding than neurotypical peers. They crave more input and are more distressed by the wrong input. They miss more cues and are more overwhelmed by unexpected ones.

This is why the parent who turned on brown noise and the parent who turned it off could both be wrong – even for the same child on different days.

Optimal Stimulation Theory offers one explanation. The ADHD brain operates at a lower baseline level of dopaminergic arousal. Sensory seeking is the nervous system’s attempt to self-regulate – to push arousal up to the functional sweet spot. This is not misbehavior. It is the brain doing its job with the neurochemistry it has. But the optimal level of stimulation varies between children, between modalities, and between moments.

The practical consequence is direct: any system that prescribes a fixed level of auditory stimulation for “ADHD children” as a group will be wrong for most of them most of the time. The only approach that works is one where the child (or their parent) can adjust the level in real time.

Autism, Auditory Hypersensitivity, and Misophonia

Auditory processing in autism follows a different but equally complex pattern.

Within this already-heightened auditory landscape, misophonia adds another layer. Misophonia is an intense emotional and physiological reaction to specific trigger sounds – often mouth sounds (chewing, lip-smacking), breathing, tapping, or whispering.

The 45% misophonia rate has a direct design implication. Sounds that are marketed as “relaxing” in mainstream wellness apps – personal ASMR with whispering, mouth sounds, tapping, and breathing – are potential misophonia triggers for nearly half of autistic users. This is not a theoretical concern. It is a documented prevalence rate that makes personal ASMR a non-starter for any platform serving neurodivergent populations.

This is why CyberSeals offers ambient ASMR only. Nature sounds, environmental textures, and tonal backgrounds do not contain the human-produced trigger sounds that drive misophonia reactions. The distinction between ambient and personal ASMR is not aesthetic. It is clinical.

Why Algorithms Cannot Solve This

The technology industry’s instinct is to solve personalization problems with algorithms. Collect data, build a model, predict the right setting. In an era where attention spans have collapsed to 47 seconds, the temptation to automate everything is strong. For sensory processing in neurodivergent populations, this approach fails at a fundamental level.

The problem is not insufficient data. The problem is that the signal is genuinely unpredictable at the individual level. A child’s optimal auditory environment depends on their specific position in Dunn’s four quadrants, their current arousal state, their recent sensory history, the specific task demands, and factors that even the child cannot articulate. No recommendation engine can model this. No preset can anticipate it.

The only approach that survives contact with this complexity is user control. Not as a fallback when the algorithm fails. As the primary design principle.

How CyberSeals Applies This Research

Every design decision in CyberSeals’ audio system traces back to the research above.

Silence is a first-class preset. It is not a bug. It is not an empty state waiting to be filled. For auditory-avoiding children – and there are many – Silence is the optimal focus environment. It appears alongside every other preset with equal visual weight.

Sensitivity profiles map to sensory thresholds. The Standard, Gentle, and Minimal profiles adjust volume ceilings and effect intensity to accommodate different positions on Dunn’s threshold axis. A child in the low-threshold quadrants (Sensitivity, Avoiding) needs Gentle or Minimal. A child in the high-threshold quadrants (Seeking, Low Registration) can handle Standard. The parent chooses, because only the parent knows.

Audio never auto-plays. Every sound in the platform requires an explicit user action to start. For a child with auditory hypersensitivity, unexpected sound is not a minor annoyance – it is a physiological stress response. Auto-play is a hostility that no amount of algorithmic personalization can justify.

Ambient ASMR only. The 45% misophonia rate in pediatric ASD makes personal ASMR – whispering, mouth sounds, tapping – an unacceptable risk. CyberSeals offers rain, ocean waves, forest sounds, and environmental textures. None contain the human-produced triggers that drive misophonia reactions.

The stimulation intensity slider acknowledges daily variation. The research is clear that the same child needs different levels of stimulation on different days. A fixed preset cannot accommodate this. A slider can. The right setting changes not just between children, but between sessions for the same child.

User control is not a feature of CyberSeals. It is the product. The research on neurodivergent sensory profiles does not point toward a better algorithm or a smarter default. It points toward giving every user the tools to build their own optimal environment – and then getting out of the way.

Explore the research behind CyberSeals