Dawson, M., Soulières, I., Gernsbacher, M.A., & Mottron, L. (in press). The level and nature of autistic intelligence. Psychological Science.
This paper was accepted today. I'm pretty happy about that. These are the Raven's Progressive Matrices data, some of which we presented in preliminary form at IMFAR 2005 and at the 2006 AAAS conference. They draw attention to the fact that there should be a lot more caution than is currently the case, when making assumptions about what autistics can or can't do. Some serious rethinking is necessary, about intelligence in autism and possibly intelligence in general. Our data demonstrate that areas that have been presumed to be dysfunctional in autism (e.g., fluid intelligence, high-level abstract reasoning) are instead strengths. We have called into question the basis for dividing autism into presumed "high" and "low" functioning.
This paper will probably be published in late 2007. It's my first paper as first author, and what a privilege it is to work with such wonderful colleagues and participants.
