Some Autistics May be More Rational Than Neurotypicals

There is evidence that people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, depression, or autism are, in some contexts, more epistemically rational, that is, more responsive to evidence and more likely to form true beliefs, than people without any psychiatric diagnosis. People make more accurate predictions when they are depressed, because the statistically normal way to make predictions is characterized by excessive optimism. People with autism score higher in social interaction games (such as Prisoner’s Dilemma) and are more logically consistent than control participants when making decisions involving possible financial gain, by not responding to emotional contextual cues in the same way as controls (see Tateno 2013 and De Martino et al. 2008). People with schizophrenia are also less vulnerable to a statistically normal but irrational tendency to gamble when faced with a certain loss (Brown et al. 2013) [quote from the article, emphasis added]- Read more at: The OUP Blog
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