Autistics excel at finding complex patterns in chaotic data

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Nearly every research article on autism begins by describing autism with words like deficit, abnormal, deficiency, dysfunctional etc. This bias closely approaches 100% in the research literature preventing researchers from considering any possibility that autistic brains could be unique and equal to NT brains. This contingency is literally impossible to fathom by researchers; they are totally blind to any hint that an autistic brain can be as healthy as an NT brain.. I have however found one paper where researchers conclude autistic brains are better at a task requiring synthetic higher level data integration. These researchers proposed Autistics were superior to NTs at "extracting recurring complex regularities from noisy arrays of information."

Increased Sensitivity to Mirror Symmetry in Autism

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... ne.0019519

Quote:
"In sum, we did not find evidence for the autistic visual grouping deficit predicted by WCC [Weak Central Coherence Theory]. Instead our findings raise the possibility that under some circumstances autistics are atypical in seeing both the forest and the trees, leading in this case to superior detection of mirror symmetry. Autistics' enhanced ability to detect genuine regularities within noisy stimuli deserves more attention [14], particularly as these complex abilities have been found in autistic toddlers [30]. In addition, recent findings have demonstrated an autistic preference for dynamic visual regularities at a young age [31]. Our findings suggest that while autistics are sensitive to stimuli attributes that are salient to non-autistics (i.e., vertical advantage), autistics may in addition detect and respond to environmental regularities which elude non-autistics."

Last edited by Pompei on 27 Sep 2012, 8:59 am, edited 4 times in total.

Heh, yeah, I knew that already. Nice that science is finally catching up to what we've known about ourselves for ages.

I have this ability to thank for my paycheck.

Interesting. I know a few times I have encountered patterns in video games that others either aren't aware of or they assume that my perception must be wrong because they couldn't also see it, or they blame it on confirmation bias.

I've also been able to predict how particular people or groups of people will react in a similar way. It's not based on what they might be thinking or what they might want to do, but reliant mostly on factors in their environment (events, other people, etc).

That's just one of many abilities in which aspies are better than "normal".
Yes, we are different but equal.

By the way, every person on earth does good in some things and bad in others. If that completely normal phenomenon is extreme in one person - he/she does perfectly great in some things and horrible in others - it is called a disability. So called experts wipe away the great abilities and reduce the person to his/her deficits. That's how it work...

I deal with numbers all day and trying to ignore the patterns is hard. Looking for them can get a little obsessive.

I'm good at several things, but it doesn't negate the fact I have a disability.

I can see "patterns" to art and literature that most people don't believe are there. My hunch is that it has to do with what's pleasing and relate-able to the primate brain, and that "art" isn't as subjective as we tend to think.

Of course, I get straight As, while the doubters get Bs and Cs.

Seeing is believing

It's good to see that someone is saying it.

Yes, I'm good at patterns. I also see how people can think they see patterns in everything that provides a 'link' between two pieces of information. Like how a full moon falls around the same date as a woman's period. There's a pattern but no link connecting those two things together, i.e it's not the moon that gives the woman her period and it doesn't send people insane.

I have horrifically bad sensory issues. I need to be medicated, have ear plugs constantly in my ears and wear sunglasses so I don't get migraines. I still have a crippling fear of change. I have high anxiety and less of social anxiety, but more feeling I'm not safe around certain people. I couldn't give carp if they thought I was ugly, stupid, annoying, rude etc - I just don't want them to kill me.
I've never had a job. I worry I'll lose my pension and have to struggle with getting work again and not be able to finish my novel.

My future is an occasional worry.

Though I have strengths, I am still impaired. How amazing is the human brain? To accommodate for us like this. With my ADHD I never experience writer's block. With autism I am never alone, I'm a great mimicker and most importantly: patterns are fun.

I see the no. 27 everywhere. Today my mum said she paid a painter $350 and asked for some money. When I replied to her I paid some money it was 3:50pm. I know it coincidence but it still gives me a chuckle or depending on my current state of mind, freaks me out.

I have dyscalculia (number blindness) and havent got a clue about numbers but I can still work with large amount of data in excel - as long as I view them as patterns. I do not have pictures in my head (a skill that it is often claimed is very highly developed in autistic people) but I still find it very easy to "connect" knowledge from different sources and find a bigger picture. This often seems to elude other people (a fact that puzzled me immensly until I found out about asperger a few months ago). When having a huge amount of facts, from different fields, it is easy to combine to something new I think there is a word for this, but I do not remember - something like fluid intelligence?

If we were´nt very good at some things, there probably would not be so many of us (from a biological perspective)

That's one big duh, really? Moment.

I could probably make complete chaos into an order (as illogical as it is, I probably could).

Helles: How bad is your dyscalculia? I can do general math but from pre-algebra on I don't have a clue what is going on. I only passed Algebra in college because it was open book/note, i.e. I may not understand but I can imitate. I ask because I also find it easy to find patterns in large sets of data or from disparate fields, and I was wondering if dyscalculia helped me somehow. Also I don't think fluid intelligence is it, that's problem solving independent of prior knowledge, I believe, but I could be wrong. Let me know if you remember.

That's why I'm good with languages.

I can turn a crazy and confusing language into a nice pattern of structure really fast.
Languages are just patterns in a type of speech.

I find patterns with just about everything.
I think that's why we do so well at the Raven's Matrices test.

My life is all about patterns and finding them in everything…

Mind telling us what you do?

I need a job


OP: Very interesting article thank you. In all my jobs I usually catch very complex stuff in a glance that my coworkers couldn't figure out even after it was explained to them.