Information processing by people with autism

Dear Readers,

This marks my second post as part of Autism Awareness Month, celebrating diversity, inclusion and awareness for people on the autistic spectrum.  This week, I wanted to share with you some interesting research that the University College London has been carrying out.  

Many individuals on the autistic spectrum have an increased ability to focus on certain tasks. But clinical reports have also shown that individuals can be more sensitive to distractions such as flashing lights or particular sounds, which many neurotypical individuals find easier to ignore.

Professor Nilli Lavie, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, believes that this could be due to autistic individuals having the ability to process more information in a short space of time than the average person. So in 2012, UCL decided to test this theory on 32 adult volunteers. Out of these, 16 adults were neurotypical, while the other 16 were on the autism spectrum. Each adult was tasked to look at a circle of letters which flashed very briefly on a screen, and to search for target letters, while also trying to identify a small grey shape that occasionally appeared outside the circle. At first, both groups completed this challenge with ease. But as the task increased in difficulty, the detection performance of neurotypical adults significantly decreased. Interestingly, adults on the autistic spectrum still managed to complete the task without difficulty and significantly outperformed the neurotypical adults, meaning that they had a higher perceptual capacity.

This has led me to think about one of the challenges I have faced. I recently went from attending school 5 days per week to 3 days. I have felt significantly less anxious and happier as a result. But why did I find school so difficult previously? Could it be because my brain processes a lot more information at once? This can often lead to overstimulation by the end of the working week. I need more down time and breaks than a neurotypical individual.

Whatever the explanation, it is well known that people with autism can feel overwhelmed by the intensity of daily life. However, this study does also suggest that our increased perceptual capacity has some advantages.  Professor Lavie went on to say: "Our study clearly shows that people with autism can do better than typical adults in tasks involving rapid presentations of a lot of information. There are clearly careers, such as in IT, that can benefit from employing people with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders."

Hopefully this study, and others like it, will encourage people with autism to look for ways to capitalise on their strengths.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and I can’t wait to see you back next week!