Older NT and Spectrum People Difference in Learning Rates?

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My older Spectrum friends seem far more curious, excited and distracted by things than my NT friends. I'm wondering if the learning rates are different because Specturm people's brains seem to mature more slowly.

Is there a study anywhere about if there's a difference between how much retention older NT brains have when learning something new compared to Spectrum people?

I think I'd probably take issue with the idea that our brains mature more slowly. We mature differently - some aspects are far more mature than NT peers, others less so. I think I'd suggest what you're seeing is the ADD/ADHD aspects of the spectrum. Both conditions are common comorbids, and would explain the brief flashes of curiosity and interest. One man's curiosity is another's lack of focus, remember.

I didn't mean that Spectrum people have slower brains. It's more like there is a lot more happening which makes intergrating everything gained through the years happen more slowly. Does that make sense?

My young adult HFA son is learning at a very rapid pace. There'sa lot happening with him. His brain branching out with greater depth and, less rapidly, breadth, in picking up cues of the humans around him. . People who don't understand HFA may decide that he's floundering because he hasn't figured out conformity, nearly as well as NTs. They wouldn't look beyond that.

The only thing more intense than obsession, is after several.

The drive to learn everything about a subject, and then move on, has confounded people, but it is no more than learning a letter in an alphabet. Later in life these are the building blocks of thought.

Books, art, photography, printing, computers, have all had a stand alone place in my past, now I use them all, intergrated in digital media.

Part of it is learning how to learn, and part is this is real, so I will use it for a foundation.

As we are judged by other standards, social withdrawal is a good response. The problems come when someone wants to help you, by stealing your modeling clay, because it was wrong for you to pay attention to it, when Oprah was on TV, or even Football!

Autistics may seem like tortured children, that is because they were tortured as children.

Imagine going to schools and taking all the books and pencils, paper, because the right thing to do is save the forests. It is what happens to us, what we learn from is everybodies right to correct for they are all perfect, they do it by interupting, taking, punishing, and disrupting.

This is what slows the process, disrupts the learning phase, and causes many of us to hate you all.

Surviving and keeping a life long love of learning is just as hard, for why is a fifty year old man reading books, those are for school kids!

The Autistic people I have known, and we did better in the old days, before psychobabble and poison pills, did some very good things in later years. One trait I have noticed is taking a lifetime of learning and starting a new business at 60.

It is a great time, almost everyone you have known is dead. It could have happened a lot sooner.

They also tend to stay up to date about some things, unknown to their age peers.

A good number of people reject the computer and Internet, and demand that it, which they would never look at, should be regulated by their church.

NTs do not make good adults. Autistics that get away do.

Frankly, I agree with mmaestro! If my experience is any indication, and I have read a number of papers saying my position is NOT unusual, ASD peoples brains DO mature more slowly *******AFTER******* they had a giant growth spurt! Over all, the rate is roughly comparable.(The last paper I read said within about 2%) ASD people simply learn better, and perhaps more, earlier.

BTW as for learning rates? Most NT people learn based on their need and to brag. I think ASD people learn mostly because they want to, or just can. Who knows about average ability. Some here DO speak of heavy visualization, and that DOES, ironically, create a stronger memory faster.

Maybe AS people are still curious and actively getting involved in things at an older age because they are less likely to be married. I think NT married people get bogged down by demands from the spouse so that as they get older than tend to not learn new things and get in a rut.