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Autism: Common, heritable, but not harmful

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2006

Morton Ann Gernsbacher*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706 http://www.gernsbacherlab.org
Michelle Dawson*
Affiliation:
Pervasive Developmental Disorders Specialized Clinic, University of Montreal, Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, Montreal QC H1E 1A4, Canada http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_02.html http://www.psychia.umontreal.ca/recherche/chercheur/mottron.htm
Laurent Mottron*
Affiliation:
Pervasive Developmental Disorders Specialized Clinic, University of Montreal, Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, Montreal QC H1E 1A4, Canada http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_02.html http://www.psychia.umontreal.ca/recherche/chercheur/mottron.htm
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Abstract:

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We assert that one of the examples used by Keller & Miller (K&M), namely, autism, is indeed common, and heritable, but we question whether it is harmful. We provide a brief review of cognitive science literature in which autistics perform superiorly to non-autistics in perceptual, reasoning, and comprehension tasks; however, these superiorities are often occluded and are instead described as dysfunctions.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006