'Agricultural specialisterne': rural employment revolution for those with Autism

[Visionary7903]

I have already mentioned, in above posts, that Autistic individuals often have good visuo-spatial skills. Studies show that Autistics generally perform well in three-dimensional drawing, for example, and tasks such as assembling designs out of blocks printed with different patterns.

In the post just above this one, I mentioned a study which showed that, in the auditory domain, individuals with High Functioning Autism have superior pitch discrimination and categorization abilities in comparison to controls.

So what might account for these rather surprising findings, in a population known to be ‘weaker’ in so many areas?

…In an effort to reconcile these findings showing both impaired and enhanced sensory function in [Autism Spectrum Disorders], it has been suggested that perceptual abilities may depend on the nature and complexity of the sensory stimuli, with impairments characterizing responses to more complex stimuli and enhancements seen more often with simple stimuli (Samson et al., 2006; Mongillo et al., 2008). For instance, in the same study, adolescents and adults with autism were found to show superior orientation discrimination of luminance-defined gratings but inferior discrimination of texture-defined gratings that are believed to be processed further along the visual pathway (Bertone et al., 2005). Given that multisensory function depends on stimulus integration, it may be an inherently complex process even when the component stimuli are exceedingly low level. Such a view is supported by the tendency for multisensory processing to occur both within and beyond primary sensory cortices (Ghazanfar and Schroeder, 2006)…

(source: Altered Auditory and Multisensory Temporal Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders)