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We argue that hyper-systemizing predisposes individuals to show talent, and review evidence that hypersystemizing is part of the cognitive style of people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). We then clarify the hyper-systemizing theory, contrasting it to the weak central coherence (WCC) and executive dysfunction (ED) theories. The ED theory has difficulty explaining the existence of talent in ASC. While both hyper-systemizing and WCC theories postulate excellent attention to detail, by itself excellent attention to detail will not produce talent. By contrast, the hyper-systemizing theory argues that the excellent attention to detail is directed towards detecting 'if p, then q' rules (or [input-operation-output] reasoning). Such law-based pattern recognition systems can produce talent in systemizable domains. Finally, we argue that the excellent attention to detail in ASC is itself a consequence of sensory hypersensitivity. We review an experiment from our laboratory demonstrating sensory hypersensitivity detection thresholds in vision. We conclude that the origins of the association between autism and talent begin at the sensory level, include excellent attention to detail and end with hyper-systemizing.

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Autism and Asperger Syndrome are autism spectrum conditions (ASC) characterized by deficits in understanding others' minds, an aspect of which involves recognizing emotional expressions. This is thought to be related to atypical function and structure of the amygdala, and performance by people with ASC on emotion recognition tasks resembles that seen in people with acquired amygdala damage. In general, emotion recognition findings in ASC have been inconsistent, which may reflect low numbers of participants, low numbers of stimuli and trials, heterogeneity of symptom severity within ASC groups, and ceiling effects on some tasks. The present study tested 39 male adults with ASC and 39 typical male controls on a task of basic emotion recognition from photographs, in two separate experiments. On a control face discrimination task the group with ASC were not impaired. People with ASC were less accurate on the emotion recognition task compared to controls, but only for the negative basic emotions. This is discussed in the light of similar findings from people with damage to the amygdala.

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Autism involves impairments in communication and social interaction, as well as high levels of repetitive, stereotypic and ritualistic behaviours, and extreme resistance to change. This latter dimension, whilst required for a diagnosis, has received less research attention. We hypothesise that this extreme resistance to change in autism is rooted in atypical processing of unexpected stimuli. We tested this using auditory event-related fMRI to determine regional brain activity associated with passive detection of infrequently occurring frequency-deviant and complex novel sounds in a no-task condition. Participants were twelve 10 to 15-year-old children with autism, and a group of 12 age-and sex-matched healthy controls.During deviance-detection, significant activation common to both groups was located in the superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri. During 'novelty-detection', both groups showed activity in the superior temporal gyrus, the temporo-parietal junction, the superior and inferior frontal gyri and the cingulate gyrus.Children with autism showed reduced activation of the left anterior cingulate cortex during both deviance and novelty detection. During 'novelty-detection' children with autism also showed reduced activation in the bilateral temporo-parietal region, and in the right inferior and middle frontal areas. This study confirms previous evidence from ERP studies of atypical brain function related to automatic change detection in autism. Abnormalities involved a cortical network known to have a role in attention-switching and attentional resource distribution. These results throw light on the neurophysiological processes underlying autistic 'resistance to change'. Change detection in children with autism: an auditory event-related fMRI study Marie Gomot et al: NIMG-05-251Dear Drs Toga and Fletcher, Thank you for inviting us to resubmit this manuscript to NeuroImage. We are grateful to the reviewers for their constructive comments. Especially we would like to thanks reviewer 2 who did insightful criticisms. We did take into account most of the remarks and we feel that the paper is improved as a result. Reviewer 2's observations allowed getting a better definition of the terms and concepts used. We corrected the text according to these criticisms, but we think that some of the modifications required regarding fundamental concepts on deviance processing would not serve the manuscript. We didn't wish for adding to many additional details about these fundamental concepts, in order to keep focus on the main aim of the study which was to study change processing in an autistic population. Moreover, we felt a bit disconcerted by some of the comments (See comments 5, 7, 19, 21, 24, 30 and 34 for example). We look forward to hearing from you about the acceptability of the revised manuscript for publication in NeuroImage. SUMMARY:Autism involves impairments in communication and social interaction, as well as high levels of repetitive, stereotypic and ritualistic behaviours, and extreme resistan...

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Dual process theory proposes two distinct reasoning processes in humans, an intuitive style that is rapid and automatic and a deliberative style that is more effortful. However, no study to date has specifically examined these reasoning styles in relation to the autism spectrum. The present studies investigated deliberative and intuitive reasoning profiles in: (1) a non-clinical sample from the general population with varying degrees of autism traits (n = 95), and (2) males diagnosed with ASD (n = 17) versus comparisons (n = 18). Taken together, the results suggest reasoning on the autism spectrum is compatible with the processes proposed by Dual Process Theory and that higher autism traits and ASD are characterised by a consistent bias towards deliberative reasoning (and potentially away from intuition).