Autism: It's About Wiring, not Ability

A post on Quora by educator John Harland sums up well why many people are confused about what autism is:


Why is there so much confusion about what is and is not autism?


One reason is that many people see autism only in terms of those who have serious problems coping socially and in other ways. They may even argue that intelligent people are not actually autistic because they are not seriously disabled.

Psychiatric “diagnosis” of autism is largely based on impairment, so it ignores a lot of intelligent people who have learned to mask their autism in many circumstances.

However neural imaging has given us a picture of autism that is independent of impediment or disability. It is a distinct brain wiring centred on reduced synaptic pruning. That means that autistic minds are less restricted to habitual patterns of thinking and acting.

That may sound contradictory because autistic people do many things in highly repetitive ways. However those are commonly the things that seem unimportant or boring and they do those the same every time so that they can focus on what they find interesting.

The reduced synaptic pruning means that autistic thinking is more complex. That can be a big help when you have the brain power to drive it but it can be a major impediment if you don’t.

The population of people who have serious problems coping with their autism is fairly well known, The population of people for whom autism is a help to their thinking is much less understood and many recognise it in themselves only after decades of recognising they think differently to most people but not having a name for how they think.

That population of hidden autism may be several times that of disabling autism but the data is not yet clear on that. Not least, it depends on whether you use brain scanning or psychiatric diagnosis as the criterion by which you recognise autism.