Psychology
The Advantages of Autism in Learning: Neurophysiology
And my own thoughts and experiences as an autist myself
Many people are aware of the disadvantages: High sensitivity for information overload, difficulties in social skills, sleep disorders, and so on.
In this article, however, I wanted to share some of my findings on the advantages of autism including my own thoughts as an autist myself.
#1: People With Autism Rely Less on Semantic Learning
For many people, memorizing “Doctor-Nurse” (= semantic) is easier than “Doctor-Beach”. For people with autism, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case. This, usually, allows them to learn and remember stuff a lot more quickly than others.
An atypical medial temporal lobe (which hosts the hippocampus) could explain this less reliance on semantic learning. In short, the medial temporal lobe encodes and transfers new explicit memories to long-term memory.
In my own experience, I definitely can recognize a significant boost in my memory capabilities in comparison to others.
Relevant source:
