ScienceDaily summarizes a new study (paywalled) published a few days ago in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
It is the first study to find a link between autistic traits and the creative thinking processes.
People with high levels of autistic traits are more likely to produce unusually creative ideas, new research confirms. While they found that people with high autistic traits produced fewer responses when generating alternative solutions to a problem - known as 'divergent thinking' - the responses they did produce were more original and creative.
The research...looked at people who may not have a diagnosis of autism but who have high levels of behaviours and thought processes typically associated with the condition. This builds on previous research suggesting there may be advantages to having some traits associated with autism without necessarily meeting criteria for diagnosis.
People with high autistic traits...are typically considered to be more rigid in their thinking, so the fact that the ideas they have are more unusual or rare is surprising. This difference may have positive implications for creative problem solving.
They might not run through things in the same way as someone without these traits would to get the typical ideas, but go directly to less common ones. In other words, the associative or memory-based route to being able to think of different ideas is impaired, whereas the specific ability to produce unusual responses is relatively unimpaired or superior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @10:40PM
Because thats how science works. If it can't be quantified, its not real.
And this kind of garbage is exactly what I mean. Even if there is such a thing (there's not), until you can define and quantify the "soul", it cannot be proven to exist. Its nothing more than religious mumbo-jumbo which has nothing to do with science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @10:59PM
If it can't be quantified, its not real.
Maybe we just don't have the knowledge to understand something right now. That doesn't mean it's not real. Trying to quantify something before you actually understand it leads to all sorts of pseudoscience (IQs, for instance). The social 'sciences' are specially guilty of this.
And free will is in all likelihood just an illusion, at least the type of free will that many people think of. We are all subject to the laws of physics.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 19 2015, @07:33AM
Maybe we just don't have the knowledge to understand something right now. That doesn't mean it's not real. Trying to quantify something before you actually understand it leads to all sorts of pseudoscience (IQs, for instance).
How do you think we'll get that understanding? Measuring something no matter how crudely, which is what happens when one quantifies something, is the primary way we learn scientifically.
And free will is in all likelihood just an illusion, at least the type of free will that many people think of. We are all subject to the laws of physics.
Unless, of course, the laws of physics don't rule out free will of the kind many people think of.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday August 18 2015, @11:25PM
How about that which causes oneself to experience the activity within this brain and not that one.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?