British Academy - Imaginative Minds: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

People with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulty with a range of imagination-related skills. These include mindedness (the ability to imagine and empathise with the mental states of others), pretence,
use of metaphor and narrative, certain forms of imagery and creative imagination. The impact of these difficulties on the thought and behaviour of people with ASD may provide insights into the role of imagination in cognition, and the extent to which components of imagination are served by common, related or distinct cognitive mechanisms. The case of ASD may also offer clues to the kinds of brain processes involved in imagination.

I will consider some implications of imagination deficits in ASD, including how a person’s capacity to understand other minds may relate to creative imagination. My conclusions will be tempered by an intriguing paradox: that a small minority of people with ASD have outstanding skills in fields such as art, music, and poetry. Whether these works are creative is a controversial question, with implications both for our understanding of autism, and for the essential nature of creativity.

1. Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Open University

top

home