Changing What We Value As Intelligence : Infracognition

This episode of the Gifted Neurodivergent Podcast introduces the concept of infracognition, a form of cognition that involves understanding and using emotions alongside traditional thought processes. It is contrasted with metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Infracognition is oppressed in our current educational systems, which favor linear, factual learning. But that infracognition is more suitable for our change we face in the near future. Infracognition will provide the skills we need to work best with AI. 

This podcast illustrates how our systems are failing all students using a comparison between two types of students, Emily and Alex. Highlighting how what we value is the wrong type of intelligence. Infracognition is the intelligence our children need to prepare them for the future. Not just neurodivergent children but all children. Lillian emphasizes the need for an educational paradigm shift to adapt to rapid societal changes and the role of infracognition in fostering true understanding and mental health. She concludes with a call for educational reforms that respect and utilize both metacognitive and infracognitive abilities.


To access supplemental information covered in this podcast please visit the Gifted ND Website at:
https://www.giftednd.com/post/the-educational-system-and-twice-exceptional-2e-learners-a-comparative-analysis-of-infracognition-1
or
https://www.giftednd.com/blog/categories/research-papers 

Transcript

Changing What We Value As Intelligence: Infracognition

​[00:00:00] 

Lillian: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the gifted neurodivergent child podcast. I'm Lillian Skinner. Today, we're going to talk about a topic that could revolutionize the way we see education and human potential. 

I have identified a new, but likely familiar type of cognition. One that challenges our traditional understanding of intelligence and learning that involves our emotions. This new cognition is called infracognition and is the body's mirror of our metacognition. Metacognition is there thinking about thinking and infracognition is thinking about feeling. If you would like to know more. I have some white papers on my website, you're welcome to read. . 

It also describes how intelligence works in conjunction with metacognition and it drives the savant, giftedness, profound, giftedness, and genius ability to see the world in ways others don't or can't. 

When I was growing up, it was told that I wasn't allowed to have this intelligence because they wanted us to regurgitate their facts . But with AI, that's going to turn around . [00:01:00] AI has all that cognitive information and your ability to regurgitate it, doesn't have much value. Now it's the information that you take in from the world around you that you can use in conjunction with the AI cognitive data. Or to find new ways of seeing it or to find ways of proving that the cognitive or established fact is wrong. 

That's my biggest focus that I have been using AI for. To show how, what we view as good mental health, what we view as learning and education is wrong. That what we had was serving of the system, but not of the individual. 

In order for us to adapt to the change that is coming, because there was change coming on every single front. We need to understand what our sensing intelligence is telling us.

Infra cognition is the summing up, or the aggregation of all of our body sensory data, our past memories, and patterns of recognition that we have in our subconscious. It's subconscious data that somehow it makes it up to our [00:02:00] cognitive. For some of us, that's a lot. For the genius. It's an incredible amount. 

Ever since I was a kid. When I've learned new information, my body has filtered it and said yes or no. I have been told a lot of information in my lifetime where I have sat there and said, these are lies and I don't trust this person. 

I knew this at the body level, not necessarily the mind level. So it was pre-cognitive and I felt very sure of it. I could use my body and emotions to figure out why it wasn't right. With AI now that is so very easy.

We have been programmed out of Infra cognition . Most people use only their cognitive. They don't know who is lying to them. They trust people, even though their body is probably saying no, don't trust this person. Because we have been forced to move within a system that is a captivity situation. We can't really use our sensing data or infracognition to understand the situation because we really don't have a choice. 

But There's ways we can [00:03:00] navigate it by understanding what our infra cognition is and using that data to be our most discerning and most intelligent selves.

With AI as a part of present and future. We are facing a paradigm shift and how we would see intelligence. I am part of that paradigm shift. For most of my life. I was denied my intelligence. Now I am being seen for it. That only makes me realize what a scam our education system is. They were educating a certain type of intelligence . educating those who could be easily used as tools. 

One of the things I want you to understand as a parent is how they do that. What that looks like in the school systems. What a child with high metacognition is experiencing versus a child with high infra cognition. 

I know this because I come from a family of savant and this is how we learn. This is how we filter the world and understand it so complexly. 

the reason we do not have savant and genius and destroy prodigy is our school systems actively [00:04:00] work against the intelligence of those of us who have high sensing data that we can transfer up to cognitive knowledge. 

It breaks the connection between our cognitions. It breaks the ability for us to bi directionally learn. Which is the driver of genius. I had a paper on sub stack showing how Einstein learned bi directionally and that is why he was so far ahead of his peers. It takes bi-directional learning and giftedness in both somatic and cognitive to be exceptional. The only people who maintain this in our school systems are the people who are twice exceptional, twice gifted . 

They keep The toddler ability to learn at somatic and cognitive levels transfer this information between our two different intelligences. 

 I go back and forth between my metacognition and my infracognition all the time.. I use them both to navigate the world so that both of my cognitions are up and running, talking, being mindful. This is true mindfulness. It's not that clear, peaceful feeling. Mindfulness is using both of your intelligences. You will want to be aware and [00:05:00] using your sensing data inputs in real time. 

I'll give you an example of infracognition is coming up that everybody has experienced. Deja VU. You've all had deja VU. I'm very sure of it. Deja VU is pretty clear for me. When I have deja VU, this is familiar, what is familiar about it? I can go back and forth between my metacognition and my infra cognition, and it will tell me when I experienced it be for. 

Not every single time, but it will take me back to the memory where it occurred. Sometimes it's a bunch of memories that occurred . There's something that I notice a pattern and deja Vu says this has happened before. 

 It's trying to let you know, of a pattern that is not yet at that full cognition state. It's at a pre-cognition state. 

It's saying I'm going to bring attention to this because this is a part of a pattern that we've experienced before. It's just part of pattern recognition. All of this is logical. It's a part of our way of being in the world. That's trying to protect that's trying to make sure that we know where we're going. 

Think of it as being in the woods. You're going to remember certain things about the woods, but the woods for the most part looks pretty much the same. [00:06:00] So when something's off, you're going to be like, oh, I have deja VU about this space. I have turned here before, and this is the way to get back home. We have lost all of these abilities on how we navigate new spaces, because we've been forced into the same spaces over and over again or we're waiting on other people to show us. That works in captivity.

That is going to go away. With all the change coming. We are now going to have to trust ourselves, enter new spaces, even if they were once familiar, because of change coming so rapidly. We're going to have to be more aware of our surroundings, more aware of the world around us, because we are going to have to go back to being more aware of everything.

We are now switching to a new paradigm of intelligence where it will be about you navigating great change. We've been a society focused on details and small picture and we are shifting to a society focused on big picture. Because AI will offer us the small details. We can pull down this data [00:07:00] and see it quite quickly. Notice our patterns. As long as we all have access to it, it won't be a big deal. We are going to need to use aI as a tool for reference. But we can't trust a lot of the data in it because the data in it is not accurate. 

A lot of the data is based on the old world, the world that we held things stable. There'll be this period of time where we can pull a AI to see the difference and create our own new knowledge to make a living. To make ourselves experts again. 

We're switching from the people who were usable by those in the system. To the people who are the frontiersmen, the people who are the new navigators, the ones who can figure stuff out or moving from. Valuing, essentially autism, which has giftedness in cognition to valuing ADHD and those of us who have twice exceptionalism, which has giftedness and autism and ADHD. 

I say giftedness, because the d isability is the system as it is. [00:08:00] Our Systems don't teach you how to be healthy or use your full intelligence. They tell you that there's something wrong with you because your intelligence doesn't work for the system. But your intelligence has always worked for you. 

I had to figured out how my intelligence is different to make my own way. We are all about to have to make our own way. And so this has given me an advantage as we switch over. For other people, it will be a disadvantage. Right now, what we need to do though, is fully understand the types of intelligence that we have been denied. With our system. 

We all have infra cognition. We just have to now recognize it, understand it, and learn how to use it. Most of us don't know how to use it. Most of us have been programmed out of it. I spent most of my life trying to figure out why people couldn't see how I figured things out. Only to realize that. They have been conditioned out of it and I hadn't, I realized part of the reason I hadn't is trauma. Our infra [00:09:00] cognition. grows during trauma. It grows. And helps us realize the full, big picture of our trauma. So we can heal. That is stymie that is stopped in our systems. So we are going to need massive change in our education and mental health, because we traumatize children in our education. 

And then we do not give them the proper mental health to heal from that. We need to change everything because the way those two work, they do not respect the natural process for how humans move through the world. Since we are going to be all experiencing more trauma, more change, more growth, we are going to need to find and use our natural way of being.

You can see the changes already here in our weather, it's going to keep increasing and we need to get in front of that. The change is also here in our economy. So ecology and economy, the changes here, they're both going to be changing incredibly fast and we need to learn to use our infracognition with [00:10:00] AI two to be able to survive what's coming and get in front of that. 

I'm going to give you two children who are the example of the old systems ideal vs the new systems ideal. These two children are in our current system. 

Let's meet Emily and Alex as the examples. They're both 12 year old is old. Right now by putting your children into the U S public school system this is their experience. 

 Let's start with 12 year old. Emily.

Emily is the ideal student. She fits perfectly into our current educational system. , she's organized, punctual, and thrives on structure. In class emily sits quietly. She takes detailed notes . She raised her hand for questions. She does her assignments on time. She's neatly presented. She's thoroughly researched. She excels in the testing and receives consistent praise from her teachers. 

Her strengths are her linear thinking, her analytical tasks. She is excellent at following directions. She's excellent at memorizing information. She applies learning concepts in a straightforward manner. She plans her study schedule in advance and she is seldom overwhelmed by the workload. 

However, she does struggle with open-ended [00:11:00] tasks or when they have to do creative work in class. She doesn't like to do unconventional thinking. She gets anxious when faced with ambiguity and when she has to do any risk taking. She excels in a structured environment, but she's going to find it challenging as we move into different ways of thinking.

 Now, let's focus on Alex. Alex has a very different experience at school from Emily. 

Alex is a highly creative, intuitive, very empathic and kind child. But none of these strengths matter in our school systems, what they focus on is how he struggles to sit still in a class for so long. 

During the day, Alex fidgets, doodles and daydreams. He reads books under his desk. He's constantly working very hard not to be distracted. Sometimes he's looking at the teacher. Sometimes he's not. When he is engaged, he tends to ask too many questions and talk too much. 

He likes to visualize concepts . He likes to process information in his own way. In terms of academic performance Alex is inconsistent. He has to really like the subject or he can't focus on it. He demonstrates insight and creativity that's beyond grade level. But he can't reflect that [00:12:00] enough to have it show up in his grades. Alex struggles with rote memorization, repetitive practices. He sometimes falls behind in these areas. 

He understands and retains information best when he's making or doing or creating something that physically links them or applies it to the real world application. He Has a talent for seeing patterns and connections between on seemingly related ideas. 

He's very sensitive in his environment, class noise and social dynamics. He worries about everyone else. His sensitivity gives them an acute awareness of everyone else's emotions and deep capacity for empathy,. Alex thrives in any hands-on experience. 

Alex has a very different experience at school than Emily. . 

That was the experience of those two children from the teacher's perspective or from a metacognitive perspective, the perspective of just thinking about it, not understanding the child and how they were feeling, but what they actually perceived from the outside. That is what the metacognition perspective offers. That is the behaviorism perspective. [00:13:00] That is the perspective that our world takes when educating children. 

Now let's do this from a different perspective. Let's do this from the infracognitive perspective and evaluate Emily and Alex, and their environment from the thinking about feeling perspective. 

Emily enjoys school. She feels comfortable in the structured environment of school and society. She likes following their schedules and rules. She comprehends her teacher's expectations easily and can meet them without significant effort. She enjoys the methodical approach her studies requires as well as creating detailed plans to follow and complete them. Emily's typically focused and in her head. 

She enjoys analyzing her own thoughts, planning actions, evaluating their outcomes. The highly restricted environment of education is comfortable for Emily. Emily conforms, not because she's more intelligent, but rather because she's less aware of her surroundings and someone like Alex. She does not have a big picture perspective that shows her what's going on around her. 

She's able to filter that out quite easily. Emily enjoy school and trust the system and its efforts to cultivate her. 

In [00:14:00] the same environment, Alex could not have a more different experience.

Alex, though born into the same structured society and possibly even the same family as Emily. It feels consistently at odds with his environment. 

Alex is aware of all the restriction on his body. He's aware he can't get up for water when he's thirsty. He can't go to the bathroom without asking and it doesn't guarantee he'll be able to go. He knows it irritates the teacher, if he asked too much and that reduces his chances of going. He may not get up and change seats. He may not move around the classroom. 

He's aware of all of the limitations of the classroom. He's aware of exactly how under stimulating. One thing is an overstimulating. Another thing is at the very same moment he notices all the smells, noises, things moving in a sensitive peripheral vision, chairs and desks shifting and children from other classrooms walking by in the hallway. His attention is constantly being drawn to the windows, to the outside, because that is where he'd rather be. .

He intuitively senses the limitations of his surroundings, the confinement of the rules and the physical, making him feel restless and [00:15:00] confined.

He learns best for hands on exploration and creative projects. But this is rarely an option so he's forced to sit through long, drawn out traditional lectures on topics he could comprehend easily if he was able to read it on his own at his own speed, which is much faster than the classes. 

Alex does not understand that he is a systems one thinker and everything in our system is set up to serve system two thinkers like Emily. But he knows that everything is set up to work against him in this environment. To exhaust him, to confuse him, to make him feel stupid. Sometimes though, he's sure he's not stupid. 

He's highly attuned to the emotions and social dynamics. He picks up on the subtleties of other miss he correctly answers questions the rest of the class is stumped by . His thinking includes his emotions. Because His emotions and intellect are often to engage in a dialogue, telling him what he needs to do to behave ,despite the exhaustion of keeping up the pretenses that this has been any value to his learning. Alex knows how to process information. It's just different. 

He may not be aware that it's through his body emotions and integrating sensory inputs with intuitive understanding that he [00:16:00] has mapped his entire school and each person he encounters within it. What is very clear is that his environment is not set up to educate the way he learns. His needs to learn are not valued, respected, or understood, but when he asked for them to be met, he is punished or shamed. 

It's clear to Alex, none of his abilities such as his ability to adapt and process quickly is amazing creative problem solving his ability to come up with novel solutions matter because they do not fit into the rubric because they are not valued in our work world. Every day, that Alex enter schools, he enters an environment that is toxic for him. 

No matter how hard he works, no matter how much he studies on his own. and does what his teachers and his parents ask him to do. He knows that even if he achieves success, the costs will be very high to him. Alex says the mental model ability to know what his resources and limitations are. And his body will calculate his chances of succeeding and what the costs were. He knows that the cost will be [00:17:00] very high to his physical health, to his happiness, to his life time achievement.

 Alex is brilliant. Alex May even be a genius. But because he is the wrong kind of intelligence, . . He is exhausted and destroyed in our school system. Because he is their wrong kind of intelligence because his kind of intelligence thinks for itself. It is a full, complete, mindful intelligence, and they don't want that. 

the fact that every day, this child is able to have any emotional stability and self-containment is nothing short of a wonder. Every day, this child is being taught academically, intellectually that they are not enough. Every day they're being told they are not smart. High emotions are going to come up and try to let them know the opposite. 

It Is extraordinarily exhausting for someone who is a big picture thinker, who's a top-down thinker, someone who can see shortcuts in everything they do. The system is meant to break us. It is not meant to educate 2e children. It is out to destroy them. That was the purpose of John [00:18:00] Locke's work. It was to destroy the enlightenment era thinkers, . those who questioned..

 We know other cognitions exists. The fact that other cognitions exist is undisputed. We know there's other intelligence. Why are we only operating in the single cognitive way?

We are at a very interesting time because AI is forcing us to now care for the big picture intelligence. At the same time it is filling the need for small picture intelligence. What is going to happen is that our systems are used to us being enslaved, cognitively? 

 It's going to cost us dearly in era of a great change and AI will be interesting because it's going to reveal what they have done it is already done that I am already using it to show. I have papers out there showing how the focus on metacognition thanks to John Locke and the Prussian education system is an enslavement of your cognitive, in its disregarding your emotional intelligence, it's disregarding your body wisdom. [00:19:00] And that that disregard causes mental illness. I'm putting these papers out because , this is what our systems do. They enslave children at a time when we need them to be fully aware, to be fully intelligent. To survive the change coming. Will not be able to survive the change coming without using their full intelligence because the change is going to be that fast. 

Whether you identify with Emily, or Alex, this education system is costing everyone. too much. Not only are we losing our creativity at a time, we need it more than ever. We have a disconnect from our natural instincts and body. We have anxiety and stress from being in captivity and it burns us out cognitively, and we're not sharing a 

load between our intelligence. It does not reflect the new world changes with ecology and AI. It is a loss of cognitive flexibility because it puts us into this one style and our brain locks down in that. Then we cannot switch back. We lose our genius. We lose our servants. This is incredible real loss to the group as a whole. So a few people could benefit. 

Emily [00:20:00] is going to struggle the most in adulthood, Emily is going to be lost because everything has changed and she can't change with it. Alex is going to struggle unless he gets the right place that allows him the freedom to figure out how he works.

that is what's driving me to create the nonprofit I created. I must build this for my own children, because I cannot see doing everything I could to foster them to be healthy children, only to send them into the workforce, which is so profoundly unhealthy. 

Our emotions aren't a crux, they're a warning. They're saying our systems are broken and dysfunctional and we need to create new ones. 

Our children's creativity, intuitive understanding is their greatest asset in the next era. And they destroy that everyday we send them to school. They are frustrated and tortured in schools. The more intelligent you are, the more destructive the school system is. 

For this I new era we need to change everything. 

I want the best for my children. I hope you want the best for yours. I hope we can set them free [00:21:00] from the emotional mental, and physical struggles that they have being sensitive in a world that is , attacking them while denying them their reality. It is not their fault that they are different. The system has been set up to alienate, these brilliant children from themselves. 

 I know the teachers want change. I don't know that they understand how much change we need. But the change I offer will be good for them because we still need teachers. I am still seeking teachers to teach subjects to help these kids understand, to monitor their projects, but we don't actually need them to be on the teacher schedule. I am seeking the opposite. I am seeking children who guide the learning and teachers who are willing to respond to that.

We're looking at this backwards, children learn naturally, we have stripped them of that. Now we need to bring it back because the change coming will be so great that only those of us who have maintained our infra cognition and metacognition connection, which we all have when we're born. We'll be able to see what to do [00:22:00] and how to react. 

The rest will be pawns in a , horrible game. 

That is it for my podcast. I hope this was valuable. I really do. I have been really struggling with this one. It's been a hard one for me to put out, but I hope this was valuable. I am going to have to reduce how much podcasting I'm doing because I'm getting too busy. But I am going to be putting out more papers and more things on the what We're facing as we move further into change. I'll will also be putting things more behind paywalls as I move forward. Because it's just a necessity for me to keep going. I appreciate you listening. 

Take care, everyone.