Written By: Alexander Dominguez, Lead Writer for EnvisionSTEM
Around the world, individuals with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) have a difficult time finding employment. This is mostly due to them having atypical symptoms, most of which prohibit them from “normal” interaction with others. However, there’s research that suggests that individuals with ASD can actually thrive in certain STEM roles.
Common strengths that an autistic individual may have is attention to detail, strong memory, and visual discrimination, all of which can be applied to programming. During the programming process, most people say that they spend more time debugging than actually writing code, and sometimes, errors can be very subtle details like a missing semicolon, comma, or a letter missing from a keyword; hence where the skill of visual discrimination comes in handy. “[Students with ASD] can have highly superior visual discrimination. That is the ability to tell difference very, very easily,” Crasnow says, noting that many people dismiss this ability as inconsequential. “That’s an exceptional gift. If you’re a software debugger, often there are very subtle differences you’re looking for, a comma instead of a period, a symbol missing or a letter missing. They will focus on those differences very quickly, whereas you or I might not. (Cowan)”.
Not only that, there are many features which are important for one to succeed in a STEM job that overlap with some common traits that autistic people have (Newton):
Enjoy working towards a clear end point where progress can be seen
Strong attention to detail and ability to discriminate slight differences
Devotion to accuracy
An ability to distinguish between similar sounds
High visual acuity
Enjoy focusing on an exclusive task
An ability to rotate three-dimensional models mentally
Quickly encode and analyze information
Doesn’t mind periods of solitary work
Logical outlook and approach to problems
Enjoy knowing a high degree of detail about a specific topic
Furthermore, according to the University of Cambridge, Engineers are more likely to suffer from the symptoms of autism-related disorders than any other profession. The test has been taken by 150,000 people and it also revealed that teachers are the least likely to experience symptoms of ASD (“University of Cambridge Test Shows Engineers Are Most Autistic Profession”).
Essentially, an individual with high functioning autism can be as intelligent as a non-autistic person. However, atypical social skills and other behavioral issues may inhibit a person with ASD from a successful career opportunity, but with their exceptional skills in areas such as attention to detail and good long-term memory (skills that a non-ASD person may struggle at), it’s possible for them to obtain a job in the STEM field
References & Citations:
Cowan, Samantha. “Kids With Autism Find Path to Success at STEM-Focused School.” takepart.com, 31 Oct. 2016, www.takepart.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/feature/2016/10/31/los-angeles-stem-school.
Newton, Katie. “Autism and STEM: Career Considerations for Students.” stairwaytostem.org, 9 May 2019, www.stairwaytostem.org/autism-and-stem-considerations-for-students-thinking-about-careers.
“University of Cambridge Test Shows Engineers Are Most Autistic Profession.” imeche.org, 22 Apr. 2014, www.imeche.org/news/news-article/engineers-score-highly-in-autism-quiz-220414-1.
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