In the person with autism, the brain may already be seeing the part and be less distracted by the whole, and in the person without autism the brain may have to set aside its picture of the whole to analyze the detail.

When I first started in this field there were all kinds of stereotypes about autism, as if these were children from another planet, or children who had been brought up by wolves, that they weren't part of our population and were somehow separate.

Genes are thought to contribute a certain amount to the cause of autism but it's not 100 per cent. It might be about 60 per cent genetic. So there are going to be environmental factors that mediate the impact of autism.

Simon Baron-Cohen Quotes