People with high levels of autistic traits are more likely to produce unusually creative ideas, scientists have found for the first time.
Psychologists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the University of Stirling examined the relationship between autistic-like traits and creativity.
While they found that people with high autistic traits produced fewer responses when generating alternative solutions to a problem - known as 'divergent thinking' - the responses they did produce were more original and creative.
It is the first study to find a link between autistic traits and the creative thinking processes.
The research, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, looked at people who may not have a diagnosis of autism but who have high levels of behaviours and thought processes typically associated with the condition.
"People with high autistic traits could be said to have less quantity but greater quality of creative ideas," said co-author of the study Dr Martin Doherty, from UEA's School of Psychology.
"They are typically considered to be more rigid in their thinking, so the fact that the ideas they have are more unusual or rare is surprising. This difference may have positive implications for creative problem solving," he said.
Previous studies using the same tasks have found most people use simple undemanding strategies, for example word association, to produce the obvious answers first.
Then, they move on to more cognitively demanding strategies and their answers become more creative. The new research suggests that people with high autistic traits go straight to these more difficult strategies.
The researchers analysed data from 312 people who completed an anonymous online questionnaire to measure their autistic traits and took part in a series of creativity tests.
Participants were recruited through social media and websites aimed at people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and their relatives. Seventy-five of the participants said they had received a diagnosis of an Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
To test their divergent thinking participants were asked to provide as many alternative uses as they could for a brick or a paper clip.
Their responses were then rated for quantity, elaborateness and unusualness. People who generated four or more unusual responses in the task were found to have higher levels of autistic traits.
Some of the more creative uses given for a paper clip were: as a weight on a paper airplane; as wire to support cut flowers; counter/token for game/gambling; as a light duty spring. Common ones included: hook; pin; to clean small grooves; make jewellery.
Participants were also shown four abstract drawings and asked to provide as many interpretations as they could for each figure in one minute. The higher the number of ideas produced, the lower the participant's level of autistic traits tended to be.
