Autistic Superpowers

Continuing on with a theme I've had lately of dispelling myths and clarifying traits of autism, this time we talk about autistic superpowers. Like a lot of things, this has been muddled quite a bit by Hollywood. Ever since Rain Man came out, people have been assuming autistics can do the incredible mental tricks Dustin Hoffman's character could do in the film. I'm not saying that some autistics can't do some amazing things, mind you. The truth, as is often the case, lies somewhere in the middle. First of all, not all autistics are gifted with patterns and mathematics. Pattern autistics are, but, depending on a number of factors, they might simply have a heightened aptitude for it, have greater aptitude for music or organization, or have that level of aptitude, but be more high-functioning than Hoffman's character. Perhaps it is useful to note that the man upon whom the film was based does not have autism in the first place, so the performance's ability to correlate with real-life autistics was compromised from the jump. All that being said, there are real-life autistics who can do some amazing things.

Temple Grandin is probably the most famous autistic with special abilities. A visual autistic, Ms. Grandin interprets the whole of the world in images. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she has a photographic memory, describing the ability to play back past experiences in her head with full cinematic detail. She is also able to perfectly imagine the literal viewpoint of other people, and even animals, which allowed her to revolutionize the beef industry by intuitively understanding the visual cues that would alarm cattle. Stephen Wiltshire is another visual autistic with amazing abilities. He can focus on entire cities while flying over them in a helicopter with enough precision that he can draw the entire city later without making a single mistake in detail. Visual autistics are probably to easiest ones to explain in terms of their unique abilities because their abilities are simply heightened versions of the ones you already possess. You can probably remember most of your last birthday party or what the Empire State Building looked like the last time you went to New York City. Understanding the others can be harder.

I suppose I'll start with verbal autistics, since that's what I am. Since we understand absolutely everything in terms of textual or spoken language, we become extremely adept at understanding ideas. This allows me to gain something like a working knowledge of virtually any subject simply by heavily researching and rapidly absorbing the information. Pattern autistics understand absolutely everything in terms of the underlying pattern. The reason they tend to be so adept at understanding things like computers, mathematics, and music is that they speak code as their first language. Being naturally better at their first language than their second, they tend to be able to create and innovate more efficiently and more intuitively than most in their field. Auditory autistics understand absolutely everything in terms of sounds. Intuitively understanding sound tends to give them perfect pitch and the ability to imitate basically any sound they hear. Here, I speak in generalities, but what I've said here works for my purpose of giving a primer on autistic abilities. Remember though, there are as many types of autism as there are autistics.

-Frank