Autism Strengths
Individuals with Autism tend to have specific strengths that are different to those that are neurotypical here we identify some of these. If you have Autism you may not experience all of these traits but many may be familiar.
Autistic strengths can be categorised within the following:-
Sensory Strengths
Cognitive Strengths
Behavioural Strengths
Sensory Strengths
Individuals with Autism tend to possess heightened sensory perception and strengths, including enhanced visual abilities, attention to detail and pattern recognition. These sensory strengths can manifest in various ways, such as a love for certain sounds, textures, or colours, or a heightened ability to focus on and learn from visual details.
Some examples of Sensory Strengths are:-
PATTERN RECOGNITION
Autistic people show increased perceiving and recognising patterns. Neuroimaging research has revealed that individuals with autism have increased brain activity in the temporal and occipital areas, which are associated with perception and recognition of patterns.
ACUTE HEARING
Autistic individuals tend to have an increased auditory perceptual capacity compared with neurotypicals. This increased capacity may offer an explanation for the auditory superiorities such as heightened pitch detection.
FOCUSED ATTENTION
Individuals with Autism tend to have a focus of attention that is found to be sharper, and a sharper spatial gradient of attention. Principally they experience tunnel vision, with great clarity
of detail at the end of the tunnel.
Cognitive Strengths
Cognitive strengths refer to the ability to assess a problem and find a solution individuals with Autism tend to have a unique approach such as:-
SUPERIOR PROBLEM-SOLVING
Research has shown that individuals with Autism are up to 40% faster at problem-solving, and appear to use perceptual regions of the brain to accelerate problem-solving. They have been found to be superior in processing complex patterns.
ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE
Individuals with high-functioning Autism are inclined to be autodidacts, and can have encyclopedic knowledge in a particular area due to their special interests and fixations, and are often considered experts in particular subjects.
HYPERFOCUS
Individuals with Autism are able to exert an intense form of mental concentration or visualisation (called hyperfocus) that focuses consciousness on a subject, topic, or task; and are considerably more capable to focus for extended periods of times.
Behavioural Strengths
STRONG WORK ETHIC
Individuals with Autism make many hard task choices despite small rewards, and the brain continues to reward intrinsically for doing hard work—regardless of repetition. The lack of need for novelty can sustain our joy in both work and relationships.
A tendency to prefer doing work or pursuing interests over socialising is another trait of individuals with Autism.