Making Sense of Sensory Differences: Identifying Sensory Processing Phenotypes and Their Relationship to Social and Executive Functioning in Neurotypical Children.

Sensory processing varies substantially across individuals, yet research on distinct sensory phenotypes has focused primarily on neurodivergent populations. We examined whether comparable sensory phenotypes could be identified in 200 children aged 4-12 years with no known neurodevelopmental or psychiatric diagnoses, and whether phenotype membership was associated with executive functioning, social competence, mental health, alexithymia, and neurodivergent traits. K-means clustering of parent-reported sensory processing identified four sensory phenotypes: Sensory Adaptive, Generalized Sensory Differences, Under-responsive/Filtering Differences, and Sensory Sensitive. Children in the Sensory Adaptive group showed fewer executive functioning difficulties than children in all other groups and higher social competence than those in the Generalized Sensory Differences and Sensory Sensitive groups. In contrast, phenotypes did not differ significantly in autistic or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder traits, alexithymia, anxiety, or depression. These findings demonstrate substantial heterogeneity in sensory processing among children without diagnosed conditions and suggest that sensory phenotypes may be meaningfully related to everyday cognitive and social functioning. Future transdiagnostic work should directly examine the extent to which these phenotypes are shared across neurotypical and neurodivergent children.