Plaisted Grant Kate, Davis Greg
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Site, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 May 27;364(1522):1393-8. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0001.
In addition to those with savant skills, many individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) show superior perceptual and attentional skills relative to the general population. These superior skills and savant abilities raise important theoretical questions, including whether they develop as compensations for other underdeveloped cognitive mechanisms, and whether one skill is inversely related to another weakness via a common underlying neurocognitive mechanism. We discuss studies of perception and visual processing that show that this inverse hypothesis rarely holds true. Instead, they suggest that enhanced performance is not always accompanied by a complementary deficit and that there are undeniable difficulties in some aspects of perception that are not related to compensating strengths. Our discussion emphasizes the qualitative differences in perceptual processing revealed in these studies between individuals with and without ASCs. We argue that this research is important not only in furthering our understanding of the nature of the qualitative differences in perceptual processing in ASCs, but can also be used to highlight to society at large the exceptional skills and talent that individuals with ASCs are able to contribute in domains such as engineering, computing and mathematics that are highly valued in industry.
除了那些具有学者技能的人之外，许多患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASC）的个体相对于普通人群表现出卓越的感知和注意力技能。这些卓越技能和学者能力引发了重要的理论问题，包括它们是否作为对其他未充分发展的认知机制的补偿而发展，以及一种技能是否通过共同的潜在神经认知机制与另一种弱点呈负相关。我们讨论了感知和视觉处理的研究，这些研究表明这种反向假设很少成立。相反，它们表明增强的表现并不总是伴随着互补的缺陷，并且在感知的某些方面存在不可否认的困难，这些困难与补偿优势无关。我们的讨论强调了这些研究中揭示的有和没有ASC的个体在感知处理上的质的差异。我们认为这项研究不仅对于进一步理解ASC中感知处理质的差异的本质很重要，而且还可用于向整个社会凸显ASC个体在工程、计算机和数学等行业高度重视的领域中能够贡献的特殊技能和才能。
