14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists from the United Kingdom established in a new study that people who suffer from autism have a significantly higher capacity to process new information than their healthy peers. This ability remains active even when they are subjected to multiple data in rapid succession.
At the same time, autistic people are more likely to identify the critical components of the data being presented to them. Many others have difficulties in understanding the main point of information they hear. The new discoveries may explain certain things.
For instance, they go a long way towards explaining why so many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) work in the IT industry. This sector has a very high incidence of employees suffering from conditions in this spectrum, a lot more so than most other industries.
In addition to impairing social interaction and communication, autism oftentimes hampers learning as well, but only in certain patterns. In many cases, autistic patients exhibit an increased ability to focus their attention of specific tasks, while completely neglecting others, PsychCentral reports.
The downside is that autism makes sufferers more likely to be distracted as they focus, particularly by irrelevant stimuli, including certain sounds and flashing lights. The new investigation was led by scientists at the University College London (UCL).
Professor Nilli Lavie, who is based at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, believes that the higher-than-normal information processing capability displayed by autistic patients may stem from an atypical interaction between their ability to focus and their susceptibility to distraction.
“Our work on perceptual capacity in the typical adult brain suggests a clear explanation for the unique cognitive profile that people with autism show,” the expert argues.
“People who have higher perceptual capacity are able to process more information from a scene, but this may also include some irrelevant information which they may find harder to ignore,” she explains.
“Our research suggests autism does not involve a distractibility deficit but rather an information processing advantage,” Lavie believes. “Our study clearly shows that people with autism can do better than typical adults in tasks involving rapid presentations of a lot of information,” she concludes.
Details of the new study were published in the latest issue of the medical Journal of Abnormal Psychology.