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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 18 2015, @06:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the whoda-thunk? dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @06:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @06:22PM (#225111)

    I always love when scientists claim something is surprising when it's exactly what I'd expect.
    In this case, I would indeed expect that more stubborn adherence to literal interpretation and precise correctness would lead to both more rare/unusual and higher quality insights than the fuzzier acceptance of superficial and spurious relationships that normal thinking tends towards.
    I can see how the situation could seem counter-intuitive, but what I observe is that a certain degree of "rigidity" is required to follow-through with the often counterintuitive systems of reality that are typically neglected by more common modes of perception and thought and even actively discouraged by, IMO, a rather misguided and sloppy society.
    In a way, I guess I think of it as being rather more careful, selective, and thorough than normal, which is exactly where you should expect to see fewer but higher quality results.

    Speaking as someone who scored in the 70%+ (iirc, it was years ago) likelihood of being on the autism spectrum according to a university study questionnaire, even as an adult who'd overcome several autistic-typical behaviors since childhood and answered according to my adult status. However, I'd also be a rather unusual case nonetheless and haven't otherwise been diagnosed, thus I'm reluctant to read too much into that. It's even possible I misunderstand and misrelate to the nature of the autistic "rigid thinking" and my expectation is right for the wrong reasons. So take as you will.