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: 1) by Francis on Tuesday August 18 2015, @10:48PM
Wow, are you seriously suggesting that a lack of a diagnosis is the same thing as a lack of a case? Because that's a huge problem. A lot of marginal cases were never diagnosed because the child wasn't quite stupid enough to require testing, they had a marginal IQ, but since it was slightly too high, they wouldn't have qualified for a diagnosis. But, for all practical purposes those kids had autism, they just weren't quite diagnosable as having autism. The least severe cases might not even have been tested in the first place.
Prior to recently, nobody really bothered to look into such cases at all, as there wasn't anything that could be done about it.
As far as the citations go, those are hardly reliable citations to be making. You've got a couple of news programs with no details and a link to a site that provides "natural health care." Doesn't exactly make me have much confidence in the source.
Take a look at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140703125851.htm [sciencedaily.com]
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday August 19 2015, @05:52AM
My links were about one specific program that you should watch. If you want some real research, there is plenty, but gut flora is "icky" so much less research happens there. It's not like sexy gene sequencing.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-bacteria-may-play-a-role-in-autism/ [scientificamerican.com]
http://www.nature.com/news/bacterium-can-reverse-autism-like-behaviour-in-mice-1.14308 [nature.com]
http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20130703/lower-bacteria-levels-in-gut-may-be-tied-to-autism-in-kids [webmd.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Glida7/autism_and_bacteria [wikipedia.org] - look at some references there
And YES, I'm saying that Autism almost did not exist in the past before *oral* antibiotics. While there maybe genetic reasons for some autism cases, it is by far overshadowed by the environmental reason.