The Truth About Autism

An excellent piece from David Wolman on Autistic:

By the mid-1990s, [Laurent] Mottron was a faculty member at the University of Montreal, where he began publishing papers on “atypicalities of perception” in autistic subjects. When performing certain mental tasks — especially when tapping visual, spatial, and auditory functions — autistics have shown superior performance compared with neurotypicals. Call it the upside of autism. Dozens of studies — Mottron’s and others — have demonstrated that people with autism spectrum disorder have a number of strengths: a higher prevalence of perfect pitch, enhanced ability with 3-D drawing and pattern recognition, more accurate graphic recall, and various superior memory skills.