>>12270821“In fact, there is almost as much evidence that the correlation could be in the opposite direction.
There have been theories about underlying connections between autism and intelligence for years. The stereotypes of the mad professor or the eccentric genius are old ones, and some modern psychologists theorize that illustrious scientists such as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein might have been autistic.
In 2015, Cambridge University undertook a study of almost half a million people and uncovered intriguing evidence that autistic traits (although not necessarily full-blown autism) are more common among people involved in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields… careers historically requiring quite a lot of brainpower.
This doesn’t prove any connection between autism and intelligence, let alone a causative one, but other research has gone further. Another study that same year uncovered a likely genetic link between autism and genius—families that were more likely to produce autistic children were also more likely to produce geniuses.
This trend may be under-recognized in the ASD population, according to a 2015 study that found that, while low-IQ ASD patients performed the worst in cognitive function tests, high-IQ ASD patients performed worse relative to a non-autistic control group. The study concluded that different cognitive processes could be affected in high-IQ individuals with ASD, potentially creating the likelihood that their intelligence is further underrated on standard tests”
