Advantages of Autism

Autism and possible intellectual advantages - The Boston Globe

Q. What evidence do you have about the advantages of autism?

A. Studies have shown that autistic individuals outperform those without the disorder in a wide range of visual perception tasks. . . . Our own research analyzing brain imaging studies found that the visual spatial regions of the brain are more activated in autistics while they do a particular task and that they perform that task 40 percent faster. This indicates that these differences aren’t deficits, but are associated in some cases with superior performance.


Changing perceptions: The power of autism - Nature

Without question, autistic brains operate differently. Most notably, they rely less on their verbal centres. When non-autistic people look at an image of a saw, for example, their brains are activated in regions that process both visual information and language.

In autistics, there is comparatively more activity in the visual-processing network than in the speech-processing one2, and this seems to be a robust characteristic of autism, across a wide array of tasks3. This redistribution of brain function may nonetheless be associated with superior performance4 (see fMRI images below).

These differences may also have downsides, such as difficulties with spoken language. But they can confer some advantages. A growing body of research is showing that autistics outperform neurologically typical children and adults in a wide range of perception tasks, such as spotting a pattern in a distracting environment.