I've been compiling a list of ancillary senses that some people have and others are missing. Which is, of course, also true of the basic information collectors (sight, sound, taste, touch and smell). What's different about the latter is that their absence tends to be relatively easy to spot by attentive observers.
Anyway, the ancillary senses I've come up with, so far:
sense of self
sense of time
sense of place
sense of distance
sense of tone
sense of motion
sense of environment
sense of rhythm
sense of season
sense of temperature
sense of sequence
That last one, sense of sequence (what came first, what came second and what came last), would seem to account, by its absence, for some people putting the cart before the horse. It might even be exemplifies by the often expressed claim that "the best defense is a good offense" -- a strategy that may be effective on the playing field, where the goals are fixed and so are the rules, but when it's applied in real life situations (shoot first and ask questions later), it's a recipe for disaster. Although, as the Iraq invasion demonstrates, not necessarily for the instigator.
When you come right down to it, our whole crime prevention agenda is premised on the belief, not that punishment is the proper response to crime, but that, by instituting a regimen of deprivation, crime can be prevented. Which, if one considers that crime is essentially the deprivation of another's human rights, then the "preventive" institution of punishment by the agents of government, sets up crime/deprivation of rights as the default. It can be argued that it's not a crime when the deprivation is legal, but it's an unjust argument. Legal crime is a violation of the principle of justice. An eye for an eye is not the same as an eye for suspicion.
Of course, if a person's brain doesn't track sequence, if there's no time-stamp, so to speak, then, instead of "garbage in, garbage out," it's going to be "jumble in, jumble out," and the memory output is likely to be random, albeit accurate as to particulars.
Take, for example, the assertion that Saddam Hussein had used poison gases (as opposed to tear gas) to restrain his own people as a justification for driving him from power 14 years later. One could call that a non-sequitur. Most people called it a lie, a deliberate perversion of the truth, although, in fact, it was a half truth, a deliberate effort to deceive. And, it worked, largely, I suspect, with that portion of the population whose sequencing function is lax or lacking.
Indeed, learning and keeping the correct sequence in mind may be an acquired skill, one that simply comes more easily to some people than others. Children obviously vary as to the ease with which they learn to tie bows and knots. Some never master the task and content themselves with slip-on sandals and shoes. Whether it's because they are "all thumbs" or can't remember the sequence of steps involved is hard to determine.
Computers are particularly unforgiving when it comes to following the proper sequence. The "garbage out" is probably the consequence of jumbled input. There seems little doubt that the people who write the instructions for computers are sequential thinkers. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to suspect that the conservative antagonism towards science, the scientific method and the computational machines that are supposed to provide proof are beyond their comprehension. They don't understand and are antagonistic towards people who try to "make" them understand.
Icons, I suspect, serve to hide the works. But, in a sense, the icon puts the expected effect before the process of getting there, the desired end before the means. Apparently, judging from the gadgets' success, it's what many people feel comfortable with. Which suggests the lack of a sense of sequence is not a disability, but a normal variant -- one that can be found in all populations around the globe. Something to accommodate, like left-handedness, not to try to change.